"No, not yet. We want as little to do with them as possible. This place is our home. If they come messing around up here some of the raiders might think about making it theirs. Jenkins is probably just-"

The barking of the dogs silenced him in a heartbeat; indeed it silenced everyone. The barking grew in intensity over the next several seconds, until all four dogs wails blended into a cacophony of noise.

"Out front!" exclaimed David over the intercom. "There's something coming up the drive."

"What is it?" Susan asked.

Mac had already grabbed up his rifle and was headed for the front door.

"Holy shit!" David exclaimed awed by whatever he saw on the security monitor. "Uh, guy's, we might have a little trouble."

Mac would second that statement as he opened the front door, stepped out onto the porch with his rifle held ready and saw the M1A1 Abrams tank rolling up the drive way. It rolled into the parking circle and came to a halt just before the statue of dolphins. It was dented and scratched, burns and small craters from enemy fire scarred it hull, and its treads and underside were stained with blood and smears of rotting gore from the countless zombies ground beneath it treads. The turret was pointed menacingly at the front of the house and its powerful engine growled like a hulking prehistoric beast of prey. It was truly an intimidating sight. Behind it came a Humvee with a closed shell. It steered around the tank and came to a halt. By that time everyone but Jennifer and Samantha had crowded out onto the porch. The passenger door of the Humvee opened and out stepped a soldier in fatigues. There was something familiar about his blond hair, square shoulders, haggard face and weary, bloodshot eyes...

"Sgt. Turner." Mac said with a smile and started down the stairs.

"McReedy." A smile cracked the Sergeant's own weathered, unshaven mug.

Matt remembered him now. He and his squad had been guarding the rear entrance of Ft. Douglas. He had looked and sounded like a lost soul then, and judging by his appearance now, not much had changed. They had extended the offer to come with, but he had refused, choosing instead to go fight the horde of zombies that were pouring into the base.

"I thought we'd seen the last of you." Mac said, shaking the Sgt's hand.

"That was almost the case. I guess it just wasn't my time." Turner turned back to the Tank and waved his left hand. "All clear!" he called to the occupants. A few seconds later the tanks engine rumbled louder as it went into motion, navigating around the fountain to park near the north end of the mansion, just in front of the solar panels array, its turret pointed back down the driveway.

In the meantime the driver and two passengers had exited the Humvee. The driver was Pvt. Josh Irving, a chubby, round faced kid with buzzed red hair, black-rimmed glasses and a perpetual smile. The rear passengers were Pvt. Alex Cordoba, a thin Hispanic with a mustache and goatee in need of a trim and finally Cpl. William Norris, a mid sized African American with close-cropped hair and carrying a medical bag instead of a rifle.

"Norris is our medic, and a damn fine one at that." Sgt. Turner said.

The tank crew had exited their war machine and walked slowly to the porch, stretching their tired, cramped muscles. The first two were Cpl. Ted Philips, a skinny African American with a shaven head, large expressive eyes and a gap toothed smile and Corporal Bruce Carey, a skinny, dark haired man with bulging eyes and a look of permanent acid indigestion and/or constipation on his face. The third man was Commander Wayne King, tall, broad shouldered, with thick dark hair, a granite chin and a smirk of confidant arrogance across his face.

"How did you find us?" Matt asked Sgt. Turner.

"Jenkins extended the invitation, told us where to look. Once we got up here we just started checking houses. Lucky number two." Turner said, pulling a thin cigar from a pocket and lighting it up.

"Damn lucky number two." Commander King said in a deep, commanding voice. "The Tincan is on fumes. I doubt she would have made it to a third."

"How the hell did you get out of Douglas?" Mac asked. "You stayed to fight, and the word from Park City was that nobody made it out of there."

We can thank the Tincan for that." Turner said grudgingly, looking back at the tank with respect. "Once the battle was lost and it was time to flee, we found ourselves surrounded by deadfucks on all sides. And it wasn't just normal deadfucks, there were some of those superzombies, and they had commandeered a tank! Imagine that? But the Tincan punched through the bastard and then made a path through that army of deadfucks. It was like nothing I had ever seen. Thousands of zombies and they were ground beneath the Tincan's treads like tomatoes. All Irving had to do was keep the hummer in her wake." Sgt. Turner puffed on his cigar, reliving the memories.

"That was three days ago. Where have you been?"

"We took the East Canyon turn off just below Summittown and spent a couple of nights at the Joshua Ranch Golf Lodge, holed up in a ground floor condo, getting some sleep and scrounging some fuel from the vehicles parked in the different garages. Last night we took the back way out of East Canyon and came out near Wanship, skirting around Park City all together. From there we just followed the highway up to Kittewa."

"Why avoid Park City?"

"Those gutless bastards are the reason Douglas and the U fell. If they had sent reinforcements when we called, I'd probably still be at my post on the rear gate. Those cocksuckers can rot for all I care." Sgt. Turner said bitterly.

"Well you may have just escaped from the frying pan right into the fire." Rick said.

"He's not shitting, Turner." Mac said. "You not going to believe what we have to tell you."

"Me and my men are tired and thirsty. Why don't you let us go in, sit down, wet our throats and we'll talk about it." Turner took another puff on his cigar before following Mac into the house...

"My God." Was all Turner could mutter after hearing their story. The looks on his men's faces reflected similar sentiments. "What does Jenkins have to say about all of this?"

"We can't raise him on the radio." David said over the intercom. He still hadn't left his computer.

"And we can't wait around waiting to hear from him either." Mac said sharply. "Those bastards are going to come, sooner or later, most likely sooner. We need to get ready for them."

"What's your plan?" Turner asked.

"Well, it was to take-up firing positions at the upstairs balconies and have at them. If they made it inside we could clog them up at the stairs. We have grenades for the superzombies and the bastards in robes are just human, a bullet will work good enough." Mac paused. But now that you and your squad have arrived with the tank..."

"Are you sure this guy Zack is a friendly?" Turner didn't sound convinced.

"He may not be a friendly but he's definitely a non-hostile as far as we are concerned." Matt spoke up for his friend.

"Where do you and your men stand on weapons and ammo?" Mac asked.

"We got plenty for ourselves and we still have a dozen rounds left for the Tincan's main gun. But that won't be much good unless we can bunch them up. If we can catch those deadfucks in bunches the main gun will take them out by the dozens. More than likely we will just be grinding them beneath the treads. Not to mention the grenade launcher and .50 cal mounted to the turret. Still, better to mow them down with the treads and save on the ammo." Commander King said.

"We have armored vests and helmets if you and your men need them." Susan said. Turner and all of his men were in worn and rumpled fatigues.

"What I could use is a shower." Corporal Philips said, his gap toothed smile stretched from ear to ear.

"No hot water at the golf resort?" Scotty asked.

"No water period." Philips said back with flair and a smile. "We were washing our faces in the toilet bowls."

"We have defenses to prepare." Turner said with a snap, casting a sideways glance at Cpl. Philips that was meant to intimidate but only eliciting an even wider smile.

"We have four showers in this house." Sharon said as if appalled by the though of not being able to shower. "It wouldn't take but a few minutes each."

Susan recognized this side of her mother; the stern, controlling homemaker. She was slipping into an old, familiar routine as a way of dealing with her husband's death. Susan looked to David and saw him smile with warmth and love. Susan suddenly had to bite back the urge to cry.

"It sounds like a plan to me." Cpl. Philips said with a smile, rising to his feet as if the matter were decided.

"Sit your ass down Philips." Commander King snapped with good-humored reproach.

"You heard the lady Commander. They got four-"

"Back in your seat Philips!" Sgt. Turner barked at him in mid sentence. Philips sat back down in his chair with an over exaggerated lowering of his head and hunching of his shoulders.

"With all due respect Sgt. Turner," Sharon interjected herself back into the conversation. "You and your men could use some refreshing." That was her smiling, polite way of saying they stunk of three days in the same clothes without seeing a bar of soap, and the smell was in fact offensive.

"You should smell yourself Clint." Mac chided with a laugh.

"Well I guess it's settled then." Turner laughed back. "But we go one at a time."

"Who goes first?" Cpl. Carey asked, his bug eyes and sour expression already anticipating the answer.

"Rank does have its privileges." Sgt. Turner said, rising to his feet with a smile.

"Just leave your soiled clothes outside the bathroom door." Sharon said. "We have enough extras to give you all a fresh outfit and boxers. Once I have all of your clothes I'll wash them for you. Now if you will just follow me Sgt. Turner-"

"Please Mrs. Young, call me Clint." He offered his hand and smiled as wide a smile as his craggy, weary face was capable of smiling. At first she seemed taken aback by his gesture, but after a moment she took his hand in both of hers and shook it warmly, returning his smile with a beaming one of her own.

"Thank you Clint. My name is Sharon. Now, as I was saying, if you would follow me I will show you to the shower..."

Chapter 51.

Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Park City, UT 4:50 PM.

Dr. Cooper was fully aware that he was breaking a direct order from the supreme commander of the city when he ordered the three bodies taken into one of the regular autopsy rooms rather than the incinerator, but he didn't care. This was the most extraordinary phenomenon in the history of mankind, and he was on the cutting edge of understanding it. That he had barely escaped the vivisection of the gestation pod with his life was behind him now, filed away and forgotten, his mind focused on more important things, like the three body bags spread out before him on separate examination tables.

He walked over and read the tags on all three bags. Two of the men, still clad in crumpled and splintered EBA had been exterminators on his vivisection team while the third was the glass dagger riddled corpse of General Cooper. For the first two he felt nothing, they had been professionals who volunteered for the job knowing full well the risks. For the General he had a smile and a laugh at a fitting demise.

"Fuck you, you pompous windbag!" he snarled at the Generals corpse, then began to laugh. It took him nearly a minute to compose himself.

On the far autopsy table the body in the bag began to wriggle.

The last of his chuckles ceased instantly and a moment Dr. Cooper's blood turned to ice and he froze with fear...

But only for a moment, for the next he was checking the time of reanimation against the time of death. He walked over to the writhing body bag and checked the tag again...Number 2. The man didn't even die with a name, only a number. For some reason Dr. Cooper found that very funny and broke into another fit of laughter. Number 2's reanimated corpse began to struggle harder within the confines of the body bag and Dr. Cooper stifled his laughter and looked closely at the other two body bags for signs of reanimation.

SOP was to drill any corpse through the skull upon death to prevent reanimation. Dr. Cooper had told Colonel Jenkins he would do it himself. In reality he wanted to observe the reanimation process first hand, knowing he could easily dispose of them after they rose. He doubted that General Parker would reanimate, as there had been a large glass shard protruding from his left eyeball where it plunged deep into his skull, most likely scrambling the brain. But the other one...Sgt. Brown the tag read. He had died a similar death to Number 2, both crushed by the gestation pods tentacles. But his bag remained still.

Number 2 suddenly sat up on his table, his thrashings in the bag becoming stronger. Dr. Cooper stepped over to push the zombie back down on the table when a leathery, slimy, skeletal husk of a hand tipped with black hooked nails burst through the front of the body bag. It was attached to an arm equally withered, the flesh wrinkled and worn with a mangled piece of EBA covering the forearm and elbow. Less than a second later the bony, withered fingers of the other hand gripped the edge of the tear and began to rip the body bag open.

Dr. Cooper immediately classified it as an Alpha Superzombie; the withered, blackened flesh with the texture of beef jerky, the thin strong fingers and talon like nails. There was no mistaking it. But what really nagged at Dr. Coopers mind was how the body had transformed into and Alpha? Number 2 had been crushed to death in the coils of the creature's tentacle, the force so strong that his eyeballs popped from their sockets and his internal organs had been squeezed out of his nose, mouth and anus. He should have been a blind, barely intact Beta zombie. Dr. Cooper continued to watch, fascinated, as the Alpha ripped the body bag lengthwise, peeling back the two halves and exposing its head and chest. It still wore a badly damaged chest plate from the EBA, but its head and other arm were bare, both as withered and gnarled as its arms. The head was a hairless, burned lump, with a ruined, gaping hole where the eyes and nose used to be. The mouth had suffered massive trauma, splayed outward like a starfish.

The hot, wet, musky stench of charred flesh escaped bag and with it came several of the small black slugs that the gestation pod had produced. The stench reached Dr. Cooper and choked the breath from his lungs. He stumbled back several steps, gasping for fresh air. The slugs squirmed off the Alphas body, onto the table and over the side to land on the floor with little squishy-splat sounds before slithering away in all directions. One came directly at him and he stomped on it with a snarl, feeling its tiny body pulp beneath his shoe. The Alpha turned its head to look directly at Dr. Cooper, the gaping ruin where its eyes and nose used to be looking at his like some hellish, cyclopean eye. The words of Colonel Jenkins from just a few hours ago echoed through his head.

'One of those superzombies looked me right in the eye. Those empty, rotted sockets looked me right in the eye and I'll tell you right now I could hear the devil laughing. Those deadfuck's are pure fucking evil!'

Dr. Cooper knew right then and there that Colonel Jenkins had been right.

Dr. Vasquez, a colleague and fellow researcher on the phenomenon walked into the autopsy room through the swinging doors from the morgue. He was dressed in blue surgical gear and had come at the behest of Dr. Cooper to assist in the autopsies.

"What were you laughing at in here?" he asked absently. He had taken two steps into the room before he realized there was something wrong. When the eyeless Alpha on the table turned to look at him, Dr. Vasquez stopped in his tracks, his blood running cold.

"GET OUT!" Dr. Cooper shouted at him, running around the opposite end of the examination tables to stay as far away from the Alpha as possible.

Dr. Vasquez was turning to leave when he spotted movement on the floor near his feet. He looked down in time to see a black, slimy slug slither across his shoe with astonishing speed and underneath his surgical gown. He let out a yowl of disgusted fear, raising his foot and slapping at his leg. He could feel the slug squirming up his calf then the back of his thigh. He was groping for it, his yelps of fear now becoming screams of terror, but the little creature was too fast, slipping into the fold of his buttocks, squirming down against the skin, looking for a body orifice to gain entrance and suddenly his screams of terror became wails of agony.

Dr. Cooper watched Dr. Vasquez fall to the ground, clawing at his buttocks, his tortured wails echoing loudly in the tiled, sanitary autopsy room. He looked back to the Alpha, who had ripped the body bag down its entire length and was now methodically extracting its legs. There were two tables between Dr. Cooper and the Alpha, and the only door was halfway across the room, past the creature. He spotted another slug squirming quickly across the floor toward him, leaving a glistening trail of slime behind it. He quickly stomped on it and bolted for the door, expecting the Alpha to spring from the table and tackle him at any moment.

But the attack never came.

He passed Dr. Vasquez' body, which was now convulsing violently on the floor. His eyes were rolled into his skull and there was a greenish black hue creeping into his skin, but then Dr. Cooper was past him, through the swinging doors into the morgue, which was cold and lined with stainless steel gurneys. Most of them were empty, but there were three that held naked bodies covered with white sheets. The bodies had been drilled through the forehead to prevent reanimation. His breath steamed as he exhaled and he had the sudden need to urinate. To either side of him he saw a pair of slugs squirming by into the far reaches of the room. He turned back to the double swinging doors, stopped their movement and set the steel locking latches on each door into the frame above and the floor at its base.

His heart was hammering like a kettledrum in his chest, his nerves singing with adrenaline and fear. His breath was coming in short, quick gasps and he was covered in a cold sweat. But despite all that, he could not resist looking through the Plexiglas windows set into the doors to observe the Alpha's actions.

It climbed off the table and approached the next body in line, Sgt. Brown. Dr. Cooper could see how the transformation into an Alpha had readjusted and set many of the mangled body's broken bones. There were still protuberances where the spine set awkwardly there, the neck at an odd angle... The Alpha unzipped the bag, exposing Sgt. Brown's corpse, still clad in mangled EBA, the broken faceplate revealing the burnt, fire-ravaged face beneath. The Alpha appeared to look it up and down for several moments before it bent down to the ground to pick something up...one of the black slugs was clenched between its thumb and forefinger. It held the squirming slug over Sgt. Browns gaping, charred mouth and slowly turned its head so the gaping face-hole was looking at Dr. Cooper through the Plexiglas window. Its mouth spread into an even wider smile, and Dr. Cooper felt a tickle right behind his eyes, and heard a soft, bubbling chuckle echoing inside his skull.

The Alpha dropped the slug into the corpses open mouth.

Sgt. Brown's body began to shake, softly at first but increasing in ferocity with each passing second. Dr. Cooper looked to the floor just beyond and to the side of the door where Dr. Vasquez' body had fallen still. Surgical blues covered most of him but his hands and face were exposed, and they were the black, leathery skin of an Alpha. He slowly sat up and Dr. Cooper could see its eyes still appeared human, but narrowed with menace and burning red with evil.

Dr. Cooper turned and ran for the exit, a low, hollow moan escaping his throat as he ran. He pulled open the morgue door and screamed with fright when he saw the soldier guarding the door. The soldier, who had been drinking a cup of hot coffee, was startled as well and he spilled the drink down his chest.

"What the hell is-" he began angrily.

"SOUND THE ALARM! ALPHAS ARE LOOSE IN THE HOSPITAL!" Dr. Cooper ran past the angry guard, not even looking back.

"Dr. Cooper?" the guard called after him, but Dr. Cooper kept running. The guard heard a clatter of something inside the morgue, and he turned to investigate. There was nothing there but the open door, which was slowly swinging shut. But the guard spotted something scurrying across the floor towards the narrowing opening. It was a worm or slug of some kind, and it moved with lightning speed. It was out the door, across the floor and slithering toward his foot in just a few seconds. He raised his foot to stomp it when something in the morgue caught his eye...

A zombie walking around inside!

He reached for his gun but something warm and slimy climbing his inner thigh distracted him.

The slug!

He clawed at it but it found shelter under his scrotum. But it didn't stop there, seeking out his anus and probing inward. Seconds later, the agony overtook him.

Dr. Cooper reached the elevator fifty feet down the hallway just as the guard began screaming. His momentum caused him to slam into the elevator doors but he paid it little attention, instead punching the call key frantically several times. He looked behind him. The guard was flopping like a fish out of water, his screams echoing down the hallway. He saw the Alpha walk out of the morgue and stand over the guard. Behind him the elevator door dinged and slid open with a silent whoosh. He stumbled back into the car, stabbing the button for the ground level with his index finger. Down the hallway the Alpha bent down and extracted the M-16 from the dead soldiers grasp, pulling the strap off his shoulder with an almost gentle touch.

Then the elevator doors slid shut and the car was climbing...

Chapter 52.

Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Park City, UT 4:51 PM.

Jenkins and the exterminator, Sgt. Joe Farrell, had taken General Parker's Humvee back to HQ. Sgt. Farrell had stripped out of his EBA down in the basement of the hospital and was now wearing brown and green camouflage. He was on the radio with HQ, confirming the Generals death.

"Is it true?" the driver asked as they drove.