When the Future Ended Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Chapter One - Preliminary Attack

  Chapter Two - A New Kind of War

  Chapter Three - Ground Rules

  Chapter Four - Catching Up

  Chapter Five - A Tough Loss

  Chapter Six - Getting the Pieces in Place

  Chapter Seven - Settng the City on Fire

  Chapter Eight - Putting the Fire Out

  Chapter Nine - Coming Clean

  When the Future Ended

  David Spell

  Volume One of the Zombie Terror War Series

  Also by

  David Spell

  Fiction

  The Darkest Part of the Night

  Non-Fiction

  Street Cop

  Street Cop II: Reloaded

  Leading into the 21st Century…and Beyond! 2.0

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to events or persons, living, dead, or fictitious are purely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  Copyright ©2017 by David Spell

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by DavidSpell.com.

  To Annie.

  What a journey we have had! I am so glad that we have gotten to do it together. All my love.

  Special thanks to Adam and Maggie for your suggestions, insights, and ideas. Thanks for your help. I hope you enjoy the finished product.

  Who rises up for me against the wicked?

  Who stands up for me against evildoers?

  (Psalms 94:16)

  Rescue the weak and the needy;

  deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

  (Psalms 82:4)

  In all history the only bright rays cutting the gloom

  of oppression have come from men who would rather

  get hurt than give in. Jeff Cooper

  CHAPTER ONE

  Preliminary Attack

  Outside of Commerce, Georgia, Wednesday, 1700 hours

  Mostafa Alamouti taped shut the last cardboard box from his laboratory. Today was the day that he would leave and start over in another city. He had infected almost one hundred different packages of medicine over the last three weeks. His wife, Fatemeh, smuggled the drugs out and then back into the distribution center of PharmaSource, a leading pharmaceutical manufacturer.

  Fatemeh's job in their warehouse had made it easy for her to get her hands on what her husband had requested. She slipped a few different medicines into her purse each afternoon. Mostafa treated them by opening the package and using a dropper to add a small amount of the virus to the pills and then drying them under a heat lamp. If the medicine was a liquid, he just opened it and added a few drops to the bottle, put a small amount of glue on the plastic safety ring, and then closed it up.

  Fatemeh then took the drugs back to work with her. They had been shipped out to customers all over the country. There had not been any news reports of anyone infected yet but that would change soon.

  This was the first step in a much bigger attack on America. The same process was being repeated in other cities throughout the United States. Drugs that had been infected with the virus had been mailed out to their victims for the last three weeks. This was Phase One of the Jihad against America. As people began to get sick and as the virus began to work, it would take the government a while to figure out what was going on as people began to die, with some of them turning into monsters. Then it would be time for Phase Two.

  An hour earlier, Mostafa had received a text from Amir that said in Farsi, “It would be good if you could leave as soon as possible. Alone.” The message was clear. Something had gone wrong. The FBI or the police knew something and were coming to get him. But he could not leave without packing up his lab. There was too much evidence and too much of the virus that he could not leave behind.

  The message was also clear that he was to leave alone. His wife would have to become a martyr. They had been assigned to work together on this mission by Amir al-Razi. Their marriage had been more of convenience than of love but he had grown to enjoy her company. No matter. Mostafa had his orders.

  His first allegiance was to Allah and to the Jihad that was about to be unleashed on American soil. Al-Razi was his boss and if he said that Fatemeh needed to be eliminated, there must be a reason for it. After he left, Mostafa and Amir would meet at a predetermined location and he would receive his new orders.

  The boxes from his lab just needed to be loaded into his car and he would be ready to leave. Mostafa had one last thing that he needed to take care of. Fatemeh did not suspect anything. She just assumed her husband had been in the lab working.

  He came back into the house and asked her to prepare them a cup of tea. When she stepped over to the cabinet to get the sugar, he poured a small vial of liquid into her tea. His plan was to finish his drink and then leave. By then, the virus would have done its work and the responding police or FBI agents would have a special surprise waiting for them.

  Fatemeh drank her tea but made a face. “Something is wrong with this tea. It tastes bitter.”

  “I don’t know,” Mostafa shrugged. “Mine tastes ok.”

  "So, what's next? You said we’d be wrapping up our work here pretty soon."

  "As a matter of fact, I’m going to meet with Amir later tonight," he told her. "He wants to give us our next assignment. I’ll let you know what he says," he lied.

  She nodded. "It’ll be good to leave here, maybe go to another state. Amir scares me. He seems like a very dangerous man."

  If you only knew, he thought.

  The sounds of the front gate opening and a vehicle pulling in startled them. Mostafa felt a moment of panic. He touched the Makarov pistol he had pushed into his waistline. Who was he fooling? He was a scientist. He had been given some weapons familiarization from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security when he went through his training but he knew that he did not stand a chance against the American police.

  He glanced at Fatemeh. She was looking into her cup of tea, her eyes not focusing. There were beads of sweat on her forehead.

  Alamouti rushed into the front room and looked out the window. The panic gave way to relief. He saw the big pickup truck and trailer of the lawn maintenance crew.

  The fat one, Jose, the owner of the company, came to the front door. He always knocked to let them know that they were there before they started working on the yard. Mostafa needed to get rid of them quickly. He opened the door about a foot.

  “Hola, Señor. How are you today?” said Jose.

  “I’m fine. Listen, I really don’t need you today. Can you come back tomorrow?” His English was flawless, with just a hint of a British accent.

  Mostafa heard a sound from the kitchen that sounded like an animal growling.

  “But Señor, today is the normal day for your yard. We’re already booked up for tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry but I have a lot going on and…” Something grabbed at his left arm and bit down. Fatemeh had his forearm in her mouth. Her teeth were digging deep.

  Mostafa gasped in pain and stepped backwards. The front door swung open and Jose saw Mrs. Alamouti biting her husband's arm. A growl was coming from deep in her throat. Blood was dripping onto the floor and Mostafa was trying to pull his arm free.

  “Señor, Señora, que esta pasando?”

  Jose stepped into the house but he didn’t know what to do. He reached out his hand to try and pull Fatemeh off of her husband. She quickly released her grip on him and bit down on Jose’s right hand. He managed to jerk it free, ripping the flesh. The pain was inten
se. Then she grabbed his right arm and bit down on his forearm.

  “Señor, please make her stop!”

  “Help me get her into a bedroom. Come on, grab her,” Mostafa said, “and let’s take her down the hall.”

  He grabbed his wife by the collar and the back of her belt and started pulling her towards the hallway. She turned and bit Mostafa’s other arm.

  “Come on. Help me get her down the hall.”

  Jose did not want to do anything but leave, but he grabbed the crazy woman’s right arm and helped the man drag her. She turned and bit Jose again, this time on the other arm. He promptly let go.

  Mostafa was able to drag his wife down the hallway and propel her into the last bedroom on the right. He quickly shut the door.

  He looked at the injured lawn man. “I’m so sorry about that, but thanks for your help. She’s not been feeling well today.”

  “Señor, she bit me bad. I’m bleeding. Look at my arms!”

  “I’m very sorry. Of course, I’ll pay for your doctor bills. Just send them to me.”

  Jose turned and went back outside. Mostafa knew that he was as good as dead. The fat man would be an extra surprise for the police.

  He also knew that he was in trouble. The infection was, no doubt, already coursing through his own veins. She had broken the skin on both of his forearms and it was definitely enough to have infected him. Her teeth had dug deep.

  For now, he would leave Fatemeh in the bedroom. He was starting to feel dizzy and he felt the sweat on his forehead. Alamouti knew that the virus was unpredictable but he also knew that his time was short. There was no way he was going to allow himself to turn into one of those things.

  By the time he got outside, Jose was not feeling well. That crazy woman had really chewed him up. His young employee, Juan, had started to unload their equipment.

  “Hey, Juan, look at this. That woman who lives here bit me.”

  The young man walked over to see what his boss was talking about. He saw the blood on Jose’s arms and his eyes got big.

  “A woman did that to you? It looks like you got attacked by a lion.”

  “She bit me, she bit her husband. She was growling like a dog or something. I'm not feeling so good. I need to sit down for a minute.”

  He opened the passenger door of his truck and grabbed a roll of paper towels from the floor to staunch the flow of blood. Jose was hot and it wasn't because of the weather. He was sweating profusely. He tried to apply pressure to his wounds but was having trouble holding onto the paper towels.

  Juan walked around to the back of the house to look at the yard. He wanted to make sure that there was nothing lying in the grass that might damage their big mower. As he walked back towards the truck, Jose was walking towards him.

  “Hey, Jose. You don’t look so good, man. Are you sure you’re ok?”

  Jose did not answer but kept coming closer.

  “Man, why don’t you just sit in the truck and rest. I’ll do this.”

  Juan heard a sound like a growling dog. He looked behind him to see where it was coming from. He didn’t think these people had a dog. Then he felt hands. He turned back and saw Jose was right in front of him. He had hold of Juan’s head and was pulling him towards his mouth.

  “No, Jose, stop!” He tried to push his boss away but the fat man was too strong. He felt teeth biting into his neck.

  Mostafa was unsure what to do. What was Allah’s will? His car wasn’t packed yet but by now it probably didn’t matter. He could turn into one of those things at any time.

  He walked back to the living room and looked out the window. He felt hot and feverish. Both of his arms had been bitten and he didn’t even try to stop the bleeding. What was the point? He had heard nothing more from the lawn guys.

  He saw movement on the street. Someone was in front of his house. Four men wearing black shirts, two of them carrying rifles. It has to be the FBI, he thought. They were almost to his gate. Alamouti drew his pistol. He thought about waiting until they approached the house and then shooting as many of them as he could before they got him. He thought that he could kill at least one, maybe even two of them, before they shot him.

  The problem with shooting at the police, though, was that they would shoot back and they might only wound him. Then, he would be arrested and interrogated by the authorities. They would eventually break him. He knew he was not strong enough to resist for very long. He knew that he would eventually talk.

  The other, much more likely, possibility, however, was that he would turn into a monster. He was a loyal servant of Allah, but he had decided early on in this mission that he would not allow himself to turn into one of those creatures. Mostafa made his decision and ran towards the rear of the house.

  Outside of Commerce, Georgia, Wednesday, 1730 hours

  The two black Suburbans stopped in front of the empty house with a “For Sale” sign in the yard. Two men exited from each vehicle. They were all dressed alike: gray BDU pants, black boots, and black polo shirts with big yellow letters spelling out “Police” on the back. On the front of their shirts was a sewn-on badge identifying them as federal police officers working for the Centers for Disease Control.

  Team leader Chuck McCain was holding a small pair of binoculars. At six feet two inches tall and a muscular two hundred and twenty pounds, he looked younger than his forty-four years of age. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the house and the yard next door. The target house sat two hundred yards further down the road in rural Northeast Georgia.

  “It looks like he has company,” McCain told the others. The other three men were getting weapons and equipment out of the SUVs. Scotty Smith walked up to McCain slinging his Colt M4 rifle over his head. Smith was the biggest man on the team at six feet five inches tall and weighing in at two hundred and fifty pounds. His strength was quickly becoming legendary at the CDC gym.

  “What do you think?” asked Smith, running his hand through his bushy beard.

  “It looks like the lawn guys,” McCain answered. “I see some weed eaters in the back of that pickup truck. The passenger door is standing open. There’s a big mower on the trailer and a leaf blower on the ground beside the truck. I don’t see anybody working, though. And there’s a black Mercedes backed in next to the house. Probably Alamouti’s car.”

  Andy Fleming and Luis García joined their teammates. Fleming also had an M4 rifle hanging across his chest. He was a solid five foot eight and weighed a hundred and sixty pounds. He looked every bit the Marine Special Operator that he had been.

  García laughed as he heard what McCain said. “The lawn guys? Probably some of my people. I don’t hear a mower, though. Maybe they’re taking a siesta in the truck?” The other men chuckled as García put on an extreme Spanish accent.

  García was the smallest of the four men. He was just five feet six inches tall and only tipped the scales at one hundred and forty pounds. He was in his middle forties and during his career as a police officer, Secret Service Agent, bouncer, and bodyguard, more than one person had thought that the harmless looking Hispanic guy would be a pushover. They had all paid for their indiscretion. Usually, they would wake up in the back of a police car or in the hospital.

  Fleming pulled the charging handle of his M4 back and let it go forward, chambering a round. He set the selector to “safe.” Smith followed his example with his own rifle. Both men then turned their muzzles away from the group and did a press check to make sure that a round had actually chambered.

  Fleming was the assistant team leader. “Hey, Chuck, you got the warrants?”

  McCain reached into the right side cargo pocket on his BDUs and pulled out several folded pieces of paper. “I do. Arrest warrants for him and for her and the search warrant. Let me tell Rebecca that we’re here and then let’s go get them.”

  He pulled out his specially modified smart phone and touched an app called "Talk." This app turned their smartphones into encrypted walkie-talkies, much like a Nextel on
steroids. One of the buttons on the side of the phone would now function as the transmit button.

  "Team One Alpha to Base."

  Rebecca Johnson, their boss at the CDC Enforcement Agency, answered immediately. "This is base, go ahead."

  “Hey, we’re here and getting ready to move in,” McCain said when she answered.

  “Alright. Be careful and contact me as soon as the scene is secure.”

  “Will do. Talk to you in a few.”

  McCain set his phone to silent and put it back on his belt. “Phones on silent, men,” he told the others. They all double-checked their phones.

  “You be careful, Chuck,” said Smith, putting on a falsetto voice. “I can’t have such a fine specimen of manhood getting hurt.”

  Everybody laughed but McCain. The guys loved to give him a hard time about Rebecca. They had never even been out on a date but the guys enjoyed pulling his chain. He just shook his head at Scotty.

  McCain and García were not carrying their long guns. They were going to be the takedown team so they needed to have their hands free. Their 9mm Glock 17 pistols were in their duty holsters. Their belts all contained extra pistol magazines, handcuffs, a collapsible baton, and a flashlight. Each Glock also had a flashlight attached under the barrel.

  Smith and Fleming were also wearing Glocks on their duty belts but the rifles were their primary weapons. They had extra rifle magazines in their cargo pockets. All of the men were wearing soft body armor under their polo shirts.

  Chuck saw that Scotty was also carrying a set of bolt cutters. The target house had a six-foot chain link fence all around it. The bolt cutters were just in case the gate in front of the house was locked. Everybody looked ready. McCain said, “Remember the briefing. This stuff is no joke. Be careful of the lawn guys. We don’t want to shoot any civilians. And don’t get bit! Let’s go.”