Boston Under Siege (Book 1): Virus: Read online

  VIRUS

  BOSTON

  UNDER SIEGE

  FISHER WILLSON

  SYLPHAR PRESS

  BROOKLINE, MA

  #

  Dedication

  Thanks to my family for putting up with my writing and dutifully reading draft upon draft. Thanks to other writers who continue to offer inspiration.

  Fisher Willson lives in Boston. This is her first novel.

  Find her on the web:

  Tweet her right: @bostonzombie411.

  FB: https://www.facebook.com/bostonzombie/

  Web: http://bostonzombie.com/

  Email: [email protected]

  Please leave reviews on Amazon!

  Copyright

  Virus: Boston Under Siege © 2020 Jessica Fisher Willson.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact:

  Sylphar Press PO BOX 470533 Brookline, MA 02447-0533

  http://www.bostonzombie.com

  ISBN: 978-0982483909

  First Edition: December, 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  #

  Chapter 1: Getting Home

  At Logan airport Trips Kentigern could just make out smoldering mounds on the tarmac below. He dipped his ginger stubbled chin toward the GPS coordinates on his phone and nodded at Ami Alpert, his fiancée, behind him. Her chestnut hair lifted in the breeze as she let the Restricted Personnel Only door click shut behind her. Just released from a twenty-one-day quarantine, they snuck away from the appointed bus to the Lexington airbase and headed to meet Trips’ roommate Ichiro Kai.

  As Ami followed Trips down the metal staircase, he watched her cringe with every reverberating clunk of her rollaway bag. No commercial planes were operating in this airspace. Eerily quiet, even the birds were missing from the sky and the sea in the distance. Their flight had been one of the last ones in allowed.

  On the runway, they hid behind a concrete barricade as a line of security golf carts and military jeeps passed. Ami coughed, but the vehicles drove on. "I'm sorry, I can’t breathe," Ami said, fanning her face. "It tastes awful, and it’s stinging my eyes."

  He studied her teary gray eyes. “I guess if the rumor about the bodies is true, it’s those heaps." Trips winked one light-blue eye against the fumes and offered Ami his sunglasses. “We're almost there.”

  She refused the glasses, but took his hand, standing up. He added her bag to his load. As they approached the overpass, she said, "What was that?"

  Ami trailed Trips’ line of vision around them as he scanned the area. He noticed nothing. He shrugged. She shrugged in answer, and then glancing over her shoulder, his face went pale.

  * * *

  She whipped around as half-burned bodies arose from the smoking piles, bones exposed where the singe was deepest. Within seconds they were coming from all directions. Ami plunged through the charred corpses, twisting from clawing fingers, driving herself outside the ring of vile, lumbering humanoids. She lost sight of Trips and yelled for him, scrambling away from the reaching, hungry undead.

  * * *

  Things weren't going well for Ichiro Kai as he downshifted into the turn. He glanced over at his girlfriend and blew the hair out of his eyes with a puff. "What do you mean it's not showing up? I ran it this morning myself!"

  "All I have is them," Alexx Spiros said, her curly dark hair hiding the screen of the phone in her hand.

  "Let me see," Ichiro said. Alexx turned the screen to face him. "You took the wrong one!"

  "You said the prototype."

  "I said the working prototype! Fuck! We have no idea what we're driving into!"

  "I have a pretty good idea. Look!" Alexx pointed as the Honda Fit screeched to a halt startling the creatures surrounding Ami, but Trips was still buried two or three deep.

  Alexx, in a yellow Kevlar ski-suit, leapt from the car wielding a baseball bat and Nunchakus. "Get in the car, Ami!" she yelled, through red lipsticked lips.

  Ami stood transfixed, watching Trips as he shoved a charred body in the chest with her bag. The creature looked offended. Other slobbering mouths took its place seeking exposed flesh. He gained distance, pushing back. He outstretched his arms, a suitcase in each hand, and began spinning, whirling like a Dervish.

  Ichiro popped up through the moon roof and shot a steel rod from a wrist-rocket. The arrow whizzed past Trips' ear and struck a charred skull.

  "Help Ami!" Trips screamed as he made eye contact with Ichiro.

  Ichiro's black eyes met Ami's. "Don't just stand there, Ami! Moo, ya' bovine! Car, now!"

  Anger interrupted fear and Ami ran full tilt toward the car feeling like she was encased in hardening amber.

  "Trips! Trips! Here, swing batter, batter, swing!" Alexx cried, as she tossed Trips her baseball bat. She and Ichiro whaled on the smoldering creatures like Hong Kong action heroes as Trips slammed homers, cussing a blue streak. When the trio had gotten every last one, they stumbled toward the car.

  "Ami!" Trips said, heaving to catch his breath, leaning on the open passenger’s door, "You okay?"

  Ami nodded, searching his eyes. "I can't believe... Are you okay?"

  "Nice piece of ash, that." Trips nodded, handing Alexx the bloodied bat as she joined them.

  Alexx caught her breath. "Good work, out there."

  Trips zeroed in on Ichiro as he reached the driver’s door. "What the hell is going on?"

  "Well, if you'd pick up your texts, jerkus, you might have a clue, huh?"

  "Ich, they took our phones. They had Logan in radio silence, and the last message I got we were above the fucking Atlantic almost a month ago. All you said was that things were weird, and the city was in lockdown, and to meet you at these coordinates."

  Ami joined in, "Yeah, you didn't say how weird, with your freaky fucking obtuse codes. Why can't you just say what you mean? Why does everything have to be a puzzle with you?" Ami crossed her arms, her anger rising.

  "I blame you," Ichiro said, circling toward them, his blade pointed at Ami.

  "Don't get in her face, man," Trips said in her defense.

  "What? What did I do?" Ami glared at Ichiro.

  "Ami, just look at him, dude!” Ichiro twirled the tip of the katana in Trips’ face. “He's got this Daniel Boone thing going on…"

  "Don't point. That's rude.” Ami knocked the sword away. “We do not have to take this from you."

  Ichiro stopped in front of Trips. "And he's gone all brogue-y.” He turned to Ami, “You don't watch out he'll be wallowing in the mud, making sacrifices and painting himself with woad! You've got to keep a leash on this Scottish wolf hound." He grinned and wiped his sword on Trips' pant leg.

  "Hey!" Trips frowned at the black blood soiling his jeans. "That's disgusting!"

  Ichiro squinted looking up at Trips. "Repeat after me. Momma, eyed lack sum mo-urr hah-um. Go on, say it. Momma, I'd like some more ham. Or do your summers in Scotland negate a West Virginian upbringing?"

  "I didn't fucking grow up in West Virginia, and you know it." Trips scowled.

  "C'mon Ichiro,” Alexx tapped Ichiro on the shoulder, “let them change. Let's find their luggage." She glanced at Ami and pointed at the car. "Your 'Power Ranger' suits are in the back seat
. They can't bite through them...the zombies. Put them on."

  "Zombies?" Ami gulped, her gray eyes wide. No one spoke as Ichiro and Trips glowered at each other.

  Ichiro stepped back, examining his sword. "Say it! I ain't talking to you when you're all brogue-y. You sound like you have a mouthful of marbles."

  Trips gritted his teeth. "Ichiro, explain."

  Ichiro shook his shiny black mane out of his eyes, then raised an eyebrow and set his jaw.

  Trips sighed. "Mumma, I'd like some murr hum."

  "Neew, Treeps, Mah Mah, eyed lack sum mo-urr hah-um!" Ichiro said, in an exaggerated Southern drawl.

  Alexx took Ichiro by the shoulders and pointed him toward the pile of zombies. "Luggage, now."

  He followed her, ignoring Trips.

  "Ichiro! Tell me!" Trips called, as he opened the back door of the car for Ami. "Mumma, I'd like some more ham. Am I sounding all brogue-y to you?"

  "What? Yeah, totally, early Bond," Ami said as she slid over to the other side of the backseat. Trips folded in next to her. She smoothed her green racing suit. “Tell him thank you. He's such a douche."

  "Thank you," Trips yelled out toward Ichiro. He turned to Ami, "He won't respond." He turned back to the window and called out in a Southern drawl, "Not until I talk right!" and slammed the door. He sighed as he picked up his red Kevlar ski-suit. "I hate these things."

  "They were people. Right?" Ami swallowed, almost touching her fingers to her lips, but caught herself.

  "I don't know. I guess. Put your suit on." Trips watched Ichiro and Alexx poking through the remains to retrieve their luggage. "Don't know about you, but I don't want anything in that suitcase."

  She glanced out over Trips’ shoulder. "I mean, he said it was weird, but..."

  They undressed. Ami was having better luck getting into her armor than Trips was. Suddenly, there was a loud crash on the roof. Trips and Ami screamed, and Trips punched the roof. Alexx knocked on the window. "It's just me. Don't break my car, huh, big guy?"

  "Sorry," they said in unison. Trips examined his knuckles and spun his black hex-nut ring that Ami had picked out for him.

  "I can't think about it too much, or I'll freak out," Ami said, pulling at the sleeves of her green armor. "I can still feel 'em pawing at me."

  "Yeah, I know. It's gross. Can't wait for a shower when we get home." Trips wrestled the woven Kevlar over his knees and managed to pull the suit up to his hips. He was sweating. "It's too tight in here."

  Ami nodded, and they got out of the car.

  "This is ‘cause of the thing at the lab, isn't it?" Ami asked, turning so Alexx could zip up the back of her suit.

  Alexx arced a thumb at Ichiro, who was busy examining a paper map spread out over the hood of the car. "Soon as he's done, we'll scoot. Tell you everything. We still don’t know how it got into the main water supply, but yeah, pretty sure this is because of the thing at the lab.” Alexx posed for a moment, “You think yellow is okay on me? I was thinking about getting blue to match Ichiro."

  Ami shrugged, her thoughts drifting back to the day she and Alexx had discovered the broken Petri dish under the bio-bench at the lab, what may have started this entire mess. Newly assigned the job of lab manager, She’d been in charge, and had tried to be so careful, but it was Labor Day weekend, and everyone agreed they’d rather do the clean-up themselves then go into quarantine.

  Her stomach clutched thinking of Tim and Iesha, their lab mates. The two of them and all of the lab animals, except for the rabbit she’d played with the night before became ill and eventually died because of the lab accident. Alexx and I had been late that day, getting coffee.

  After the news broke, she and Alexx were quarantined for twenty-one days, but afterward the college administration let her go to the conference in Scotland. So, we couldn’t have been the cause of the spread, so what happened since I left?

  On the other side of the car, Trips stopped tugging at his armor and pointed. "Hurry up, they're swarming."

  Ichiro glanced at Trips, then at the heap. "Nah. They're ten minutes off, easy. Okay, maybe, five."

  The rubberized Kevlar stayed lodged at Trips' hips, and the stiff red and black arms swayed like tentacles as he moved. "The design on these is so stupid! Why do they zip up the back, for God's sake?"

  Alexx hopped down off the car. "Allow me." She grasped Trips' suit at the hip, "Pardon my reach," she said, as she kicked her boots into his and lifted him off the ground. He slid into the suit. "There you go."

  Trips blinked. "Did you just pick me up?"

  "Ah, yep." Alexx confirmed, a wry half-smile on her face.

  Trips kicked his toe back into hers. "And am I correct in noticing that you and I are almost at eye level?"

  "I think you still got a few inches on me there, big guy, but yeah, I'm about six feet now.” She blinked demurely, whispering, “I can bench seven hundred pounds."

  "Holy crap! Seven...? Really?"

  Alexx angled next to Trips, measuring their height. "How tall are you?"

  Trips shrugged into a slump. "I don't know, hundred and ninety centimeters?"

  "What's that?" Alexx asked, turning to Ichiro.

  "Taller than you. He's six-four, like Dewey, only he doesn't stand his brogue-y self-up straight," Ichiro traced a line on the map. "Okay, route's all set."

  "I'm not as tall as the Dewmeister," Trips scoffed.

  "Yeah, you are, Trips." Ichiro took a photo of the map with his phone and handed it to Trips. "Hold this."

  "Nothing fits, Ami," Alexx pouted. "I'm an extra-large! An extra-large!"

  Ami quit watching Ichiro and looked at Alexx. How long will it be before he incessantly insults you like he does me, simply ‘cause he’s a douche-wad? Ami flashed a grin at Alexx, "Oh, stop. You're stunning. Poor baby, six feet and slender as a rail. I, on the other hand, feel like a Tele-Tubby," Ami said looking down at her own curvaceous figure snug inside green Kevlar.

  "You're not fat!" Alexx and Trips called out in unison.

  Ami's half smile turned into a hard line as she caught Ichiro rolling his eyes.

  "What are you smiling at?" Ichiro asked, stomping past her.

  "Not you," Ami retorted. Fuck you, she thought.

  "We all look ridiculous in these, sweetie. Now, c'mon and zip me up," Trips said, wiggling his shoulders.

  "I can't even wear Ichiro's jeans, they're too small," Alexx complained, fluffing her hair and checking her lipstick in the side mirror.

  Ichiro smacked Trips between the shoulder blades and zipped his suit. "You're shotgun, you brogue-y bastard. Let's go get us a wee dram," Ichiro mocked in a Scottish accent walking around to the driver's side.

  "I was stressed out," Trips said, loping to the passengers' door.

  "I know it, laddie, I know it," Ichiro smirked. "Very few places in town are still serving, but The Club is. Aye, thanks to Dewey. Ladies?"

  Ichiro picked up a handful of stones and commenced pitching fastballs at the gathering zombies. He got one in the skull. It went down. The others stumbled over it. He turned to Trips, smiling. "Huh? Who's got it, huh?"

  Trips curled his lip in disgust. "Good one, Ich." He ducked into the car slinging his long legs into the passenger's seat.

  "So, yeah, we're in deep shit on account of the lab,” Alexx said, lacing her fingers through Ami's. "Wow, your hands are still hot."

  "Yeah, so, what are they doing about it?" Ami asked.

  "The CDC is -- Oh my God, what is that?" Alexx asked, staring at Ami's ring. Both Trips and Ichiro turned to look.

  "Uh-oh. I should have told you." Trips ran his fingers down his stippled chin, looking at Ichiro.

  "Should have told me what?" Ichiro asked, squinting at Trips. He glanced at Alexx in the rearview.

  "We're engaged!" Ami squeaked, holding out her hand.

  Alexx kicked the back of Ichiro's bucket seat. "Ichiro, look! Trips and Ami are getting married!"

  "Yes, dear, I see," Ichiro said, swerving to avoid the gathe
ring zombie horde. He shot a glance at Trips. "I blame you if she starts."

  "Just drive, huh?" Trips slumped in his seat. "I really need that drink."

  Chapter 2: The Best Bartender In Town

  The streets of Mission Hill were empty for ten-thirty in the morning on a bright fall Tuesday, but inside the bar it was as crowded as a Friday night. Trips couldn't hear what Alexx was saying over the pulse of the bass and drums, but he watched Ami hanging on her every word as he added Ichiro's tracking software to his dying phone. He drummed his fingers on the table sipping a wee heavy Scottish ale waiting for a break in the conversation.

  Ami glanced at her phone on the table, then back at Alexx. "Am I really supposed to call Katelyn Weiland to give her a report about the conference? I mean, in light of everything else, does anyone even care?"

  "You should call the Dean. She's still there," Alexx said, nodding.

  "Yeah, but..."

  "Call. See what you can find out. Now that the CDC controls our lab, I haven't heard much. I have some tainted water and tissue samples at home."

  "So, the outbreak was isolated?"

  "Not really. Contaminated the whole Cambridge water supply. Kids were collecting water samples and selling it like drugs, before they shut the system down."

  Ichiro leaned in, putting his arm around Alexx. "Word is the Mafia is trucking huge water tankers out of state. No corroboration through the interwebs though."

  Alexx turned to Trips. "So, how'd your talk on micro-nano-particle-whatevers go, big guy?"

  "Huh? Phh, fine Alexx,” Trips replied, clicking through the options on Ami's phone. “Good, good."

  "You don't have to get haughty!"

  "I'm not." He met Ami's arch gaze and huffed. "I'm not."

  Ami turned to Alexx. "Heard from Felix?"

  "Nope, our dear director is in absentia. We're on our own. Dean Weiland assigned Buckley Brent as acting liaison to the big guns from DC and Atlanta; he's also interim director in Felix's absence. The Army and the National Guard are all over the friggin' place. We're on call." She shrugged. "I go in and mess with data, while getting glared at in our own building."