Chapter 8 (7&8 redone)

Master-at-Arms Warrant Officer Leo Thorpe and Chief Petty Officer Aristotle 'Aries' Karagianis sprinted down a street toward a high rise, as Aries called for Norkman over their communication channel. "Nork, we're coming in hot with uninvited guests."

"Drop when I tell you," Senior Chief Norkman's voice was almost a growl as a cat hissed. "Tiger doesn't like your friends. Boss wants to know..."

"Not our friends," Leo interrupted, adding, "No one was left at the hospital. The infected got in and dragged them all out into the street and ate them." He tried not to imagine how horrible their deaths were. Blood and body parts were scattered for a block around the building and the inside looked like a slaughterhouse.

"Drop." Norkman's order was like a drumbeat.

Both crouched immediately. The group stumbling after them began falling down. Almost two seconds later the sound of the shots echoed from far away.

"Clear. Rescue Boss says proceed to next location. Elementary school on South Boulivard."

Leo and Aries stood up. There was a pile of a dozen perfectly preserved bodies on the road with their heads blown apart.

"Roger and thanks, Nork," Leo answered.

"Next time, Tiger comes with us," Aries insisted. He looked at the map. "This would be easier if we could drive."

"Too much noise. Get moving, I have to cover team three. Try not to get eaten while I'm busy," Norkman ordered.

"We need to find some bikes." Leo muttered as Aries groaned. "I can't ride a bike." 

"Maybe we can find a tandem bike, you like those ones the tourist ride double at the beach."

"You are not riding double where I can see you." Norkman growled. "Keep it in the bedroom. Now move!"

"Then you shouldn't have set us up on our first day," Aries taunted.

Chuckling, they looked at each other and then started jogging.

By evening, they had escorted fifteen people to safety from the school. They joined over two hundred civilians brought in by other teams. As the Navy medics examined those rescued, they radioed back bad news. Half those brought to the docks were sick from eating contaminated food. Nothing could help them, so they would be made comfortable until they passed away before being cremated. Those who were bitten were swabbed with cat saliva. The Naval doctors had figured out that an enzyme and natural detergent combination which occurred in cat saliva was the most effective thing against the organism when combined with a mild debridement cleaning.

Flying out to the fleet with those who were uninfected, Leo had to wake Aries when they landed after midnight. They stumbled with their team to shower then sleep. The Navy Seals and sailors did the grunt work of going out as rescue teams, while others like Lionel worked to coordinate information dispersal and rescue arrangements for twenty hours a day. Leo woke up and decided to find his twin.

His brother came in as Lionel finished talking to a librarian in Baltimore. Leo read over Lionel's shoulder as he sipped a cup of black coffee.

Baltimore is filled with hundreds of thousands of dead people, and I haven't seen any of them walking around. My boyfriend was so afraid of the zombie rumors he locked himself in a freezer to die and he was rotting when I found him.

Lionel typed aggressively.

Please, Babette. The Zombiism is real. Pharaoh's Yeast causes it.

Stay where you are until we can come and get you.

And find a cat to keep with you.

"You need to calm down, Lenny. You'll lose her," Leo warned as the response came back.

It's Dr. Bland. Zombies are not real and using them to scare the public into obeying martial law because of an incurable pandemic will not work on me. I am leaving to run an errand. Goodbye.

"See?" Leo laughed as Lionel cursed, "She signed off! Fuk! She's so stubborn."

"She sounds like someone we both know."

Rolling his eyes, Lionel leaned back and stretched. "Grandmother Theodora is still okay. Dr. Bland visits her, but she doesn't believe about the zombies. She has been gathering information and witness statements from social media in the area." Lionel rubbed his forehead, adding, "We are losing more and more network connections every day." He stood up. "I need to let the doctors know freezing for an extended period of time might destroy the organism in infected bodies."

Leo scowled as he reread the messages. "We need to get them out before the zombies start escaping the houses. That is the only thing containing the majority of them. If they start figuring out how to get outside..." He left the sentence unfinished, then suggested, "Let's go talk to the doctors then Captain Lansing. Maybe they can send a boomer to get her and this Dr. Bland."

^-,-^

Frozen in shock, Babette stared between the man and the elderly lady as a dozen or more cats rushed out of the brownstone onto the street. She didn't know what to do as the cats attacked the sick man, but it was the oddest thing because the man didn't make any sound while the cats bit and clawed him.

"Hurry, child!" Mrs. Thorpe hissed from the door.

Hearing the cats yowling, growling, and hissing as they charged the crowd of deranged looking people, Babs was spurred to move. She ran inside without her mask, leaving it clutched in the man's hand.

Mrs. Thorpe shouted, "Puss... Puss... Puss!" Then she slammed the door and locked it. Quickly, the elderly woman in her housecoat began checking Babs over. "Did he bite you or scratch you? Are you hurt?"

"N-n-no, m-ma'am." Babs stammered, then she inhaled and started sneezing violently before beginning to cough. Her eyes became swollen with tears as her nose dripped like a leaky faucet, when it wasn't trying to blow snot bubbles with every exhale or sneeze. She had not had an allergy attack this bad since she was a child and discovered her cat allergy while visiting one of her Aunt Ouisa's librarian friends. As she gasped like a fish out of water with ungraceful carpness, she dug in her pocket for her inhaler. Shaking the cylinder rapidly, Babs sucked a dose, stumbling as she tried to get outside in a panic.

Mrs. Thorpe got between her and the door. "No! Don't open the door or we'll both be killed and eaten."

The elderly cat lady seized her arm with surprising strength and dragged Babs to the elevator, then closed the door. It seemed to take forever to climb to the top with the low hum of the motor. Barely able to breathe, Babs crawled out onto the roof and collapsed on her back in a wheezing, coughing, snotting mess. Mrs. Thorpe went back inside. Staring up at the cloudy sky, the drizzle felt cool on her face. Slowly, she was able to inhale more deeply, so she raised her inhaler to her lips again and sucked more medicine into her lungs. In the street below, the cacophony of cats fighting zombies died down.

'They really are zombies,' Babs thought in horrified realization as she tried not to pass out.

The rain stopped falling on her face as Mrs. Thorpe leaned over her with an umbrella. "Oh dear, this won't do at all. Do you have anything you can take?"

"Yes," Babs wheezed as she held up her inhaler then she sat up slowly, coughing against the burn in her chest.

Mrs. Thorpe shook her head and held out a mask sealed in a plastic sleeve. "You'll have to wear this inside. You can't stay on the roof; my arthritis says we have bad weather coming." Just as she finished saying it the rain began to pour down much harder.

Groaning, Babs made herself get up and go back inside. "What's wrong with those people?" She asked hesitantly, but in her heart, she knew what her rational mind had yet to accept.

"Babette sweetheart, they aren't people anymore. Come inside and sit down, I have to tell you a story while we have some hot tea."

Hooking the mask loops over her ears, Babs followed her inside as she pressed the mask against her skin as firmly as she could.

"The water closet is the second door on the left at the landing," Mrs. Thorpe announced, pointing down the stairs. "Wash your face and I'll start the electric kettle."

Babs stumbled down the stairs, trying not to trip over several cats laying on the steps. Many of the cats were coming back inside after chasing the people from the park away. She found the bathroom where Mrs. Thorpe directed her. Standing over the sink with the door closed, she scrubbed her face with cold water. Her reflection showed how miserable she was with puffy red eyes and blotchy cheeks. She went to dry her hand on the towel, only to have them left covered in fine fur. She looked in the cabinets to find a clean one, but there were no other towels in the tiny half-bath. Trying not to groan out loud, she rewashed her hands then used toilet paper to dry her hands and face before putting her mask back on. She could only pray the undead denizens of Upper Fells Point would return to the park so she could drive home to the library and leave this feline infested house.

"Tea's on, luv," Mrs. Thorpe called up the stairs.

Dreading going back out into the main part of the house with all the cats, Babs took several deep breaths before she opened the door. She navigated the next flight of steps to the ground level as carefully as she could. The cats which seemed to drape themselves on every surface barely paid attention to her until she sat down. The giant yellow tabby which saved her from the zombie immediately crawled into her lap.

"Oh, King, get down, she doesn't want to hold you." Theodora scolded the cat as Babs put it on the floor for the third time in five seconds. "Sorry, love, I think he has claimed you as his human. he always did like exotic-looking beautiful women."

Babs almost laughed out loud at the characterization of herself as exotic looking. She was fairer and her hair was more of a dark cool beige than her mother's rich Nigerian brown. The Mallen streaks she inherited from her father, gave it natural highlights of silver and she bore her father's pale blue eyes. She always thought her hair and eyes made her look older and more mature, but not exotic. "I'm not beautiful," she scoffed.

"But you are. You have beautiful eyes, and skin that would make the vain queen Nefertiti envious. The Pharaohs and Kings of old would have fought wars to have you in their harem," Mrs. Thorpe chided her.

"Speaking of ancient Pharaohs, I read a blog on the internet that said Pharaoh's Yeast Extract might be the cause of the pandemic. The person I spoke to didn't answer when I asked him where it came from, but his article insisted that Prince Pharaoh Bakare found it in a meteorite? And that this wasn't the first time it caused people to turn into zombies?" Lifting her mask to sip her Earl grey tea, Babs asked, "Are they really zombies?"

"Oh yes, sadly they are. Get comfortable and I will tell you about it." Mrs. Thorpe settled herself in a large chair with a high back, she sipped her tea then set the cup aside as the largest cat Babs had ever seen leaped onto the arm of the chair and laid down by Mrs. Thorpe's hand. "This is Wolfman, a Maine Coon, and that is his milk-brother Osiris, an Abyssinian-Savannah mix." She petted the tawny spotted cat sitting at her feet. "I have kept cats since the day we escaped Bakare's cursed city. You need to realize keeping cats is the only way to save yourself, Babette. The Egyptians worshiped cats because they realized the truth after the first zombie plague, cats are the cure for it."

"But I'm allergic." Babs reminded miserably while she wheezed. Her itchy tears flowed, and it felt like her eyes were puffing out of their sockets as she sneezed into her mask,.

"None the less... Sit back and try to relax." Standing, Theodora pulled a photo album off a shelf then came back and laid it on the table between them. She blew the cat hair and dust off it in a cloud that Babs was certain would kill her. "I have a long story to tell you. My grandfather was a famous Egyptologist with the Cambridge Explorers and Antiquities Society, the real one, not the one made up for movies. When Dr. Carter discovered a manuscript from an abandoned monastery dating back to the first crusades my life with my grandfather changed forever. My parents died during World War 1. I was young and my grandparents tried to curb my willful ways. I went to one of the best boarding schools for girls in England and I hated every day I was there. In 1922, my grandfather agreed to take me to Egypt with him and my aunt while he funded Howard Carters expedition to look for Tutankhamen's tomb and then for the lost city of Prince Pharaoh Bakare. It was before the Second World War, but there was still a great deal of unrest in Europe. That crazy Hitler was sending his Nazis all over the world looking for antiquities it became a race between the SS and the Cambridge Explorers and Antiquities Society. My grandfather was determined to protect the treasures of Egypt from that madman." Theodora sipped her tea and leaned forward to pet her large Abyssinian-Savanah cat before she continued.

"When they opened the tomb for Prince Tutankhamen, all the news media from around the world was there including German spies. Then Aunt Evelyn discovered the papyri describing the city location, so she and my grandmother made a show of taking another papyrus to The Society in England for examination. While the spies followed them, my grandfather slipped away with a group of Royal Marines and went to secure the lost city of Bakare. I was so excited to go on a grand adventure with him. My best friend Penelope was Howard's niece, and she came with us. It took two weeks of traveling back and forth to follow the obscure directions to the lost city. When we got there, we didn't find tombs of riches and ancient treasures. It was a ghost city in a black-walled canyon, filled with desert cats, collapsed buildings, a well filled with ash and bones, and a strange black dust preserving everything organic. Linens, papyri, and even the food of the Fourth Dynasty prince were all perfectly preserved."

"How can that be?" Babs muttered in disbelief, trying not to breathe too deeply.

"My grandfather and his party didn't understand it then. They didn't know the dust was the dried spores of something not of this world." 

^.,.^

A/N And we have broken 21K for NaNo so far.

A/N from editing M.M.  - I split the previous version of this chapter and added the Leo/Lionel bit too because it happened at this time.