Supernova-7

The Supernovas were a series of thirteen national fortresses built when a virus called Bronto-072 swept across the planet turning an overpopulated human species of several billion into undead, flesh craving monsters. The South Dakota Supernova was the seventh fortress of the thirteen to be constructed. Upon it’s completion, the Chicago fortress had already fallen and the Supernova stationed in North Carolina was also close to collapsing itself. With the Supernovas being the last beacons of hope the remenants of the humanity, things all seemed to be spiraling to Hell faster everyday. And over the next five years, they did. Today, the only fortress left standing is Supernova-7, which is stationed in the south-east corner of South Dakota.
Nobody was quite sure why S-7 was the only fortress still standing after 5 years when every other one fell in months, but rumors of it’s existence turned it into a safe haven for thousands of scared civilians and refugees the base simply didn’t have capacity for.

…


Corporal Ramnison sat in the surveillance room of Supernova-7 in front of a series of screens that monitored the recon systems that surrounded the perimeter of the base. Minus a few stray creatures crossing the monitoring devices, it had been a quiet couple of days, and that was uncommon. Ramnison looked at one of the screens and spotted movement on monitor twenty-three which was a part of sector G and covered the area northwest of the base. He reached for his radio beside him and broadcasted a message to the recon team stationed near sector G.


“Recon-one, sector G, there is movement in the vicinity of monitor twenty-three. Report, over.


The Captain of Recon Team One and his squad members scanned the area near monitor twenty-three. On top of a hill near the monitor, five zombies stood on top of the hill and were slowly making their way towards S-7.


“Recon-one reporting.” The captain said into his ear piece. “Five zombies spotted on top of the hill near monitor twenty-three in section G. Permission to engage?”


“Clear, but be advised Recon-one. Keep your distance. We don’t know what else may be over hills at the moment. The temporary monitors wireless signals don’t have a strong enough connection to be positioned that far from base, and our primary monitors are still being repaired. Be careful.”


“10-4. Recon-one engaging.”


Recon team one advanced across an open field to get within firing range of the five targets, who were now a quarter of the way down the hill.
“

Safety off.” the captain commanded. “Five shots, five kills. Take aim. Check. Three, two, one, fire.” All five of the zombies dropped instantaneously and rolled down to the foot of the hill.

“Targets are down. Returning to base.” The captain croaked in his earpiece to Ramnison.


“10-4.” Ramnison said in response. He then looked back at the monitors and then directed his attention to his notebook to log the confrontation.


“August ninth,” he began to say to himself, “nine o’clock. Sector G, monitor twenty-three. Five zombies, zero human casualties.” He continued to write in his log book and his voice trailed off.

…


Nearly twelve hundred undead corpses made their way over the hill between monitors twenty-three through twenty-five. Some of them slowly limped up it, while other had developed the motor skills needed to run. The five zombies that made it over the hill by themselves were apart of this hoard but found themselves ahead of the game and met their untimely demises shortly after reaching the summit of the hill. Now it was the main body of the hoard climbing the hill, and they were making their way towards Supernova-7 rather quickly. Many of the zombies would die before reaching S-7, but provided luck was on the hoard’s side, maybe three hundred or so would make it at the most. The first of hoard nearly made it’s way over the top of the hill and prepared for the decsent down the hill. They tripped the sensors near monitor twenty-three which relayed the alert to the surveillance building on the S-7 fortress.

...


Ramnison was dozing off. Twelve hour shifts were hard on everyone, but no one really had a choice. This was how life was now; you sleep and let your guard down, you’re a dead man. Ramnison’s eyes began to roll back in his head when a sensor went off. He shot back to life and looked at the sensor.


The unfortunate thing about the monitors was at the moment, they were really only motion sensors. Several generators were damaged during a storm and being repaired. This meant that the visual surveillance system on the monitors had to be turned off for several hours a day because there wasn’t enough power on base at the moment to run both the visual surveillance and the motion sensors twenty-four hours a day.


“Recon Team One, are you guys still outside of base?” Ramnison said into his radio.


“Negative. We got back nearly two hours ago, sir. We reported in."


“Ah, well, the motion sensors on monitor twenty-three just went off again. Can you see anything?”


“No sir. The fog’s getting thick. I can hardly see fifty feet past the base walls.”


“Alright, stay sharp. I’ll keep all teams posted.


“Roger that, out.”


Ramnison twisted the dial on his radio to switch to the public channel that allowed him to broadcast to all teams on base.


“Attention all assault teams on base, something may be coming at us from our northwest, but fog and our monitor situation isn’t allowing us to verify this as fact. I will be putting the alert status on base to code yellow. Stay alert.


Monitor twenty-three’s motion sensor was tripped again. A few seconds passed, and it beeped once more. Then again, and again. Ramnison reached for his radio and turned on the transmitter.


“Elevating alert status to code orange. Monitor twenty-three has been tripped several times. I repeat—“. Ramnison paused midway through his sentence. Anyone listening in on the radio could hear the beeping of the motions sensors being tripped becoming more constant. Time seemed to freeze while everyone on base waited for Ramnison’s voice to be heard. Several seconds pass, and finally , the silence is broken.


“Ho-ly cow.” Ramnison said slowly. “Twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-five are all going off. Code red. Prepare for contact.”
Ramnison got out of his chair and walked to a keypad on the wall behind him. He typed in the number 822 and pressed enter. A moment later, an alarm went off notifying the entire base of the danger approaching.


In a heartbeat, everyone on base spring to life. Radio chatter went crazy as everyone rushed to prepare for the upcoming attack.


“Sentry guns armed.” was amongst some of the chatter able to actually be heard in between all the chaotic yelling on the radios.


Power being redirected to spotlights. Emergency generators are being powered up as we speak.”


The frantic checklist of things needed to be done went on and on.

…


Luck most definitely seemed to be on the hoard’s side tonight. So far, over eight hundred zombies have crossed into the normal firing range of S-7 completely untouched. The fog has picked up even more making them nearly invisible to everyone armed and waiting at the fortress ready to attack. The fog has reduced the kill zone that normally extends one thousand feet in all directions around the base to no more than one hundred feet. If things stay the way they are, eating will be good tonight for the hoard without a doubt.

…



Everyone inside S-7 sat nervously in silence and waited for what could be a devastating attack on the fortress.


“They are probably in the kill zone right now and we can’t do anything about it because of this dang fog.” A soldier said to another soldier next to him. He looked into the fog to see if there was anything visible. Seeing nothing, he sighed and prepared to speak again.


“We don’t even know how many are out there. But according to Ramnison, the sensors were going off like mad.”


“Ramnison’s probably just excited because they haven’t gone off more than twenty times in the past week. They probably were tripped seventy-five, maybe one hundred times just now, tops. I doubt we’ll have anything to worry about. The sentry guns have thermal vision 100 feet out and I’m sure they’ll take care of everything before we even get to fire a shot.” The other soldier said.


“Whatever man, we’ll see.”


Several more minutes quietly passed without anything happening. Slowly, erratic footsteps and moans that were enough to drive a man insane started becoming more audible by the second. Finally, S-7 answered back with some noise of it’s own. In an instant, several sentry guns began firing, slowly at first, but then becoming almost fully automatic.


…


The sentry guns ripped nearly four hundred fifty undead beings into shreds. However, sentry guns alone wouldn’t be enough to stop a hoard this big. Quickly, first of the zombies made it into the sights of the base’s non computerized combatants. The soldiers of S-7 began pounding the hoard, reducing their numbers by one hundred fifty or so. Many of the slower zombies have been killed at this point, but plenty of the faster and more agile ones made it past the sentry guns’ sights and made it to the doors of the fortress and began beating wildly on the walls.
The bulk of the hoard was now killed off, but the remaining zombies of the hoard hammered away on the doors and the pressure they applied on the door snapped the hinges. Men rushed to hold the door closed, but they were not enough to hold back the mass on the other side of them. The doors fly open and the hoard pours into the fortress. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose. Unarmed inhabitants of S-7 break into a panic as the zombies begin to file into the internal structures of the base.

…



“I cant make out the difference between our guys and the zombies!” a soldier yelled to his captain.


“Just fire. Our guys will be smart enough to get out of the path of our bullets.”


The soldier nodded and opened fire into the mixture of the living and the dead.

...

Corporal Ramnison slowly made his way down the corridor of the surveillance room to the doors located at the north side of the building. A frantic voice screamed on the other side of the doors.


“Dear God, please open up!” the voice yelled. Ramnison assumed it was the voice of a man.


“Please! they are gonna get me!” the man yelled again, hitting the door harder.


Ramnison hesitated. Should he really risk his life to save one civilian? The world was no longer a place for heros. If you wanted to live, you find a way yourself. Ramnison sighed and ran up to the door and unlocked it. As soon as he did, the man opened the door and collided with Ramnison, bringing them both to the ground and leaving the door wide open. Three zombies came in through the door and Ramnison rushed past them to close the doors. They locked automatically.


Ramnison now found himself cornered by three zombies. He struggled for his pistol and fired a round into the head of one of the creatures before they got too close to fire at. As they got too close for him to fire at, he was forced to fight them hand to hand. He pushed one of the zombies as it lunged towards him. It landed on top of a table and flailed around for several seconds before it fell to the ground. At the same time, the other zombie tackled him to the ground. He wrestled it for a few seconds and let out a yelp of pain as it bit into his shoulder.


“Don’t just sit there, help!” he yelled to the man who stood in the room paralyzed.


Ramnison slid his gun to the man.


“Shoot it!” Ramnison yelled to him as loud as he could.


The man picked up the gun and looked at it. Slowly, his shaking arm lifted the gun. He pointed it in Ramnison’s direction and fired.

...

Inside the fortress, the last of the hoard was finished off aside from a few hiding within the walls of the base. Order was slowly restored and the panic died fown. Announcements were being made by men through loud speakers. Surprisingly enough, casualties were rather low. However, the number of people bitten was unknown, meaning people would have to be tracked down and exterminated before they reanimated as zombies and spread the infection throughout the base.

...

Ramnison laid amongst three dead bodies. He grabbed at his shoulder in pain and laid on the ground quietly. Finally, he got up and struck the man across the face.


“Are you stupid!?” he yelled to the man. “I saved you and you stood there like an idiot as I fought off the things that I should’ve let kill you!”


“I shot them.” The man said quietly.


Ramnison’s face turned red. “Just get the hell out of here.” He said to the man who left the room instantly.


Ramnison dropped back to the floor and laid still. His shoulder hurt and burned terribly. He was a dead man and he knew it.


“Attention everyone on base; Anyone who was bitten should report to the medical tents immediately.” Said a voice coming through the base’s speaker system.


Ramnison sat up and looked at his shoulder. It spewed black goo and the skin around the bite was turning gray and dying. Necrosis.


“They aren’t gonna kill me.” Ramnison said aloud to himself. He then stood up, walked into his room, locked the door, and went to sleep.