by Ward III, C.
Toward the end of the dark, damp alley, Kevin paused and took a knee next to a filthy green dumpster that smelled of rot and disease. “I’m pretty sure the next block houses the electronic store. Should we try the front or the back first?”
“Let’s try the back door first,” Stephan recommended. “Worst case is we’ll have to circle around to the front. But at least we’ll know what’s around us if we get trapped inside.”
Kevin nodded. They were so close, they could taste it. By this time tomorrow, they’d make the link up, get extracted, and ride with escorts to the finish line of a very long and treacherous journey. He took a deep breath of enjoyment, then immediately regretted it as a lungful of rotten dumpster odor coated his nostrils.
On a very quiet Main Street in the center of Lake City, a crew of nine loaded into the town’s two pickup trucks at 0145. The third working vehicle, along with a few members of the TDF, would remain in town as a backup. Everyone shook nervous hands with each other, wishing one another good luck and a speedy return. At 0200, under an expansive blanket of stars shimmering bright in the heavens, Victor signaled his drivers to roll out.
The back door of the electronics store had been unlocked and open, but they decided to scout around the area anyway. The village was dead quiet—a spooky, unnerving type of quiet that made a light breeze whistling through an unsealed window casement seem loud. They secured the store, then returned for their backpacks without a problem. Stephan didn’t want to jinx them by saying it out loud, but this all seemed way too easy.
That night, they barricaded the doors and set out noise-making trip wires in the back alley. Using a bunch of bizarre “We Stand United Against The Infection” posters they found piled in the store, they obscured the front window the best they could. A search of the building didn’t produce any weapons or food, but they did score half a bottle of vodka and a couple of Maltesers chocolate bars from the manager’s desk.
“I could use a drink!” Gaylen begged.
“Let’s save this bottle for tomorrow. It’ll be our victory toast after we cross the finish line,” Kevin suggested.
Stephan nodded her head in agreement, knowing they were still very much in the race.
Before it got dark, Kevin killed some time by going shopping through the store aisles, cramming boxes full of miscellaneous noncircuited electronic items, wiring, and fuses that could be useful later on, then stacked it all carefully at the front door for easy loading. They all took turns on night watch, but nobody really slept.
Stanly watched the Victor parade leave town while everyone gushed over his self-proclaimed heroics. It was preposterous. Armed taxi drivers were all he and his posse were. Stanly had gone out with them a couple of days ago and witnessed with his own eyes how quick they were to use their murderous death machines. Yeah, the infected showed a heightened level of aggression, but why wouldn’t they? Savages like Victor were out there running wild, killing sick people indiscriminately without hesitation. At some point, a desperate population would eventually fight back, completing a perpetual cycle of hate. Violence was never solved with more violence. There must be a different way to reason.
The entire city council had been seduced by Victor and his genocidal peacekeeping. There wasn’t much Stanly’s political power could do about strategies outside the wall, but he could take better care of his constituents inside the walls, including the sick citizens locked inside the jail like tortured lab rats. An inspection of the testing area was long overdue; he needed to see for himself the extent of inhumanity going on in there. He envisioned shackled, malnourished prisoners suspended from cold concrete walls by heavy chains, probably starving to death in a cage of filth or being cut open while still alive, strapped to a metal table. There was no way that would happen in this town while Stanly possessed even a splinter of control. It was time to examine the jail without the interfering eyes of the other so-called “leaders,” who were huddled around Art’s radio, hungerly waiting for mercenary updates.
The key ring in Stanly’s hand rattled in the moonlight as he nervously searched for the right key to the sheriff’s office. What would people say if they found out? What would he say if he was caught snooping around the jail? The idea of having to sneak around his own town to conduct a health and welfare inspection made him angry enough to huff a cloud of vapor out into the chilled night air.
He tiptoed down the hall through an administration office that had been rearranged from the original cubicle layout into some sort of work area filled with black rubber aprons, galoshes, goggles, trash bags, rows of duct tape, yellow rubber gloves, and buckets of bleach. Stanly quietly rounded the corner, heading toward the prisoner-holding facility. In his mind, the jail represented the worst of humanity and always gave him a haunting chill. There was something disturbing about locking people up against their will, which, to him, symbolized modern-day slavery. With each step, he mentally prepared himself for the absolute worst. Stanly lifted his crowbar, ready to break into the dungeon. But when Stanly rounded the final turn, he was surprised to find the holding area’s large, heavy steel door was not locked at all. In fact, it was wide open, with strips of thick clear plastic covering the entryway.
He stepped into the cold, dark room, confused by what he saw before him. Large black blankets covered the bars of the four holding cells like curtains. He didn’t understand. The medical staff had been observing them during their tests, but how? Stanly twisted around in circles, holding a candle out to lighten the narrow passageway between covered cells. Perplexed, he reached up to scratch his head and spotted large slanted mirrors mounted near the ceiling that allowed him to peer into each of the cells.
Curious, he took a wavering half step toward one of the dark cells, trying to get a better look into the large mirror. He couldn’t see anything; it was too dark. He wished that he’d come in earlier in the day, when the jail would have been sun-lit through the barred windows. Intrigued by the curved mirror high above, he lifted the candle up over his head and wondered if anything was still alive in this place. As he stared into the mirror, a pair of hate-filled eyes emerged out of the shadow, penetrating directly into his soul.
His stomach flopped, and his heart began to race, but Stanly held his gaze, examining the bizarre eyes in the mirror. The thing inside the cell let out an animal-sounding growl that caused his knees to buckle, and he stumbled backward into the holding cell–bars directly behind him. Stanly calmed himself, taking several deep, comforting breaths, rationally reassuring himself that these were only sick people that needed his help.
Leaning on a thick blanket that padded the cell bars against his back, he exhaled a long breath. A pair of hands thrust between the bars and grabbed ahold of Stanly like a blanket-wrapped burrito. He let out a frightened scream, clumsily dropped his candle, spilling hot wax all over himself, and then his crowbar clanked across the floor.
“I’m here to help you! Please. I’m here to help!” Stanly pleaded with the creature, who held on so tight that it began to hurt. The louder he pleaded and the more he squirmed, the stronger it held on, digging its claw like bony fingers into his shoulders. He felt his muscles tear from the bone. Terrified, Stanly finally fought back with force, hitting and prying, trying to free himself. Being trapped in the blanket pacified his movements like a straitjacket, giving him no leverage against the claws. The pain of the sharp bony fingers burrowing through the blanket caused his legs to give out. He dropped straight down to the floor, pulling the blanket-curtain with him into a heap. The beast’s grasp broke free as its arms raked against the metal cross section, unable to maintain its grip.
The ghoul-like creature materialized out of the darkness before him as the blanket caught fire atop the spilled candle, illuminating the exposed cell. The bald, muscular thing was humanoid in shape only. Thick black veins, pumping ink-like infected blood, road-mapped across its pus-covered translucent skin. Thick, scaly scabs flaked off chunks of crust as it reached its claw-like hands out of the cage. It s
wiped at the air with bony digits missing the meat around the end of its talon-like fingers.
Stanly was repulsed by the creature before him. He had come here to help sick people and had found only monsters instead. The horrid, deformed beast had a large, bulbous tumor on its neck the size of a melon that pulsated like a black heart. Stanly slowly lifted himself upright again, standing on unsteady legs. The tumor seemed to swell with every heartbeat. Just outside the raging monster’s reach, he stood, staring at it in the flickering glow of the blanket fire.
The thing tilted its head back at an unnatural angle and wailed a terrifying yowl. Stanly instinctively inhaled a quick breath, filling his lungs with a startled gasp at the same time the creature’s tumor popped, spraying him in a foul-smelling cloud of spores that coated his face. His open mouth captured a revolting taste that made him fall to his knees, gagging and vomiting. In an attempt to flee, he crawled toward the jail exit through a puddle of his own bile. When Stanly’s vision went fuzzy, just before he lost consciousness, he fell face-first and smacked his head on the cold concrete as the blanket fire diminished to smoldering ashes.
STAGE FOUR
GAME TIME
Penalty: unnecessary roughing
“Debris in the road, shift left,” Raymond commanded the lead vehicle’s driver. His night-vision monocular displayed the world through a light-amplified green filter, allowing him to scan the steadily approaching road for obstacles and the passing tree line for nocturnal predators. “Fallen tree, shift right.” Briefly, in a moment of similarity, Raymond imagined he was back in Iraq, running low-profile high-threat personal security missions.
Victor rode shotgun in the second vehicle with Curtis at the wheel, who carefully navigated using only the illumination of a high- and bright full moon. Curtis followed at a safe distance to avoid accidentally rear-ending the lead vehicle if they came to a quick stop. After a few minutes out of town, his eyeballs’ chemical composition had adjusted slowly, boosting the retinas’ photoreceptors’ sensitivity, allowing him to better see outlined shapes in the road. Still, he focused on the tiny cat-eye, unpainted slits of the vehicle taillights in front of them.
Even with the headlights turned off to avoid unwanted attention from Grays or other undesirables, the brilliant lunar radiance allowed the two-truck convoy to idle along on Route 55 at twenty miles per hour. To help increase the drivers’ sensory perception, Victor had the mechanics unplug the dashboard fuses to completely blacken out the cab interiors. This allowed the drivers to focus better on staying between the moonlit white road lines.
The first couple of familiar miles out of Lake City, they knew the road had been cleared of all broken-down vehicles, making for an easy drive, but this far out was unexplored territory. As they swerved past obstructions, Victor made notes of the locations and types of vehicles for the mechanics to return later to salvage fuel and parts.
It only took them half an hour to reach the village boundary, where forestry and farmland turned into a pattern of man-made structures. Curtis slowed, then turned, following the lead truck down a narrow two-lane city street. The convoy continued to turn left several more times, lapping a specific block twice before coming to a slow stop. Ready for a quick escape, the trucks were left running with doors propped opened as they got out and waited. Waiting for something to happen, ready to react when it did. Auspiciously, nothing happened.
As planned, Raymond and Victor attacked a gift shop, swiftly and aggressively clearing the two-story structure. A low whistle from up above signaled to his boys that the building was clear and safe to bring up the bait bomb. Curtis, with the help of his dad, quickly strung up a tape player rigged to light a road flare using a model-rocket engine igniter at precisely 0700. With the road flare–rigged radio, twin propane tanks hung from the second-story window. The tanks would be remotely opened by his little brothers at the same time the road flare was automatically ignited, making a nice-size boom. Curtis looked at his dad and nodded.
“Do it,” Victor confirmed.
When Curtis pressed play on the tape player, there was a five-minute delay of dead air before the music started playing at full volume, which would have any Grays in the area running. They would need to hurry, and they did. Down the dark stairway, they took two steps at a time, ran out the front door of the shop, then jumped in the truck. To ensure everyone was accounted for, Victor did a quick head count before accelerating to the end of the street, circled around a couple of blocks, then stopped again at a Hallowed Grounds coffee shop.
“All right, boys, this is your stop. We’ll pick you up here thirty minutes after the kickoff. Good luck. Remember, stick to the plan no matter what.”
“OK, Dad, we got this,” Michael said, looking more like a young man today than a little boy.
Zavier only nodded, wearing a small pack on his back and carrying a rifle in his hands, looking extremely anxious.
Victor wanted to give them both a big hug but decided to avoid embarrassing them in front of their security team. Instead, he gave each of them a strong fist bump. He watched Michael, Zavier, Grumpy, and Deuce take off toward the bridal shop, where they’d be slaying a pile of Grays in a few hours.
“Curtis, you and Sergeant Dembele take the trucks to the gas station at the edge of town and wait for us to call. If for some reason we lose comms, come rolling in ten minutes after kickoff. Keep buttoned up in the vehicles while you wait; please don’t fall asleep,” Victor said with a wink, knowing that everyone was at a heightened state of alertness.
Victor and Raymond each shouldered a daypack and grabbed their scoped rifles out of the trucks. “You ready, Darcy?” Victor asked the third member of his team. Fitzwilliam Darcy was a defense-force wall guard who had been volunteering for extra training, showing potential as a valuable asset to the Survivor Rescue Team. Darcy nodded, and the three stepped off in the other direction, toward the opposite side of town.
“What the hell is that?” Gaylen whispered.
“Is that music?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t know if I’d call that ‘music’; that noise is far from Mozart,” Stephan grumbled, tossing and turning on the floor, sleep evading her.
In the distance, Curtis’s cassette tape of dead air had elapsed to his favorite rock band, who was now playing at full volume. Sounds of empty tin cans rattling in the alleyway behind the electronics store alerted them to numerous Grays scurrying past, toward the sound of music.
“Whoever is playing that is really dumb or really smart. Every Gray within hearing distance will be drawn to that,” Gaylen said.
“Which will leave this area completely clear. I’d say that they’re very smart and clever. I’m looking forward to meeting this Lake City crew; they’re impressing me already.” Kevin gleamed.
For the next four hours, the visitors of this village were entertained—or tortured, depending on their music taste—by Curtis’s teenage playlist as the tape continued to play on repeat, at full volume, until early morning.
Raymond rolled away from Victor to unzip his dew-soaked pants. Lying on his side, he relieved his bladder, aiming an arcing stream toward a nearby gopher hole.
“Really? Right here?” Victor asked.
“Look at that warm golden-brown flow. It’s steaming in midair,” Raymond replied.
“That’s pretty dark. You need to hydrate more. Don’t spray Darcy; he might shoot you in the back,” Victor advised.
“This was your plan, remember? Would you prefer I use that tree over there? I could cartwheel all the way if you want me to compromise our OP on this quiet, boring morning.”
This wasn’t a horrible plan, but Raymond thought it was a bit of an overkill for a simple pickup. Hell, it’d be easy to simply roll in, set up a quick perimeter with overwatch, load up the PAX, then boogie on back to town before breakfast. Raymond was all for erring on the side of caution, but come on…the grass was wet, he was cold, and that appalling music was driving him insane.
“Contact, TRP Three
,” Victor whispered. “Four armed individuals in formation. Walking east to west. Range me.”
“TRP Three is 450 yards at the road sign. No wind. Targets walking diagonally three miles per hour, half value. Aim lead edge. Can you ID them?” Raymond whispered.
“Negative. Appear to be dressed in blue jeans, black leather jackets, and vests. Some hats and do-rags,” Victor replied.
“Are they our package?” Raymond asked with doubt.
“Don’t know. Looks like a couple ponytails in the group; could be females. Can’t tell from here. Darcy, do you have any movement back there?” Victor asked his rear-security man.
“Nothing but birds back here. A few Grays heading toward your boys a few minutes ago,” Darcy reported.
“If these are our contacts, they’re dumb as fuck. Why are they not at the electronics store already—or are they out for an early morning stroll? Maybe they went to grab the Sunday paper,” Raymond commented while tracking them with his reticle. “Coming up on TRP Two. Three hundred yards at the brown-and-tan striped Torual’s Taxi van.”
Inside the electronics store, Kevin, Stephan, and Gaylen were eager for a signal. They had assumed that the music playing in the distance since 0300 was some sort of diversion and that the Lake City team was already in town for them.
As soon as there was enough ambient light inside the store, they had their gear packed up and staged next to the front door. After an additional half hour of waiting and pacing, Kevin decided to curb his nerves with an MRE snack. Gaylen rinsed her hands and face with a bottle of water, trying to freshen up. Stephan continued to pace back and forth near the front store window.
