“Shit!” said Max, slamming the dashboard with his palm.
“John?” said a woman in the back. “John? John! No, no, no…” She cradled the man’s head as his lifeblood spilled onto her lap.
The wormheads were gaining on them again, and Max dared forty miles an hour as he sped toward the military base. Up ahead, he saw the turnpike as the bottom of a long hill. The caravan was going to have to slow down to make the left turn at the non-functioning light, but if they did, the wormheads would be all over them in seconds.
They were all doomed, and Max wondered if he was the only one who knew it.
“Breaker, breaker,” he said into the CB. “Anybody on this channel?”
“That you, Sheriff?” it was Chooch.
“Chooch, how far up are you in the caravan?”
“Second car.”
“Listen, we need a diversion. The caravan isn’t going to make the turn fast enough. There are about a hundred wormheads on our asses.”
“You volunteering?” Chooch.asked dryly.
Max sighed and glanced at Valentine. “We’re not really equipped to do that. I’ve got five people in my truck.”
“Copy that,” said Chooch. “Tarbell, you on the line?”
“I hear ya, Chooch. We’re on it,” came the voice of another man.
Up ahead, a truck turned into the left lane and braked so that the caravan could by them. It was a white hummer with a dragon wrap, and the barrel of a gun stuck out of every window. Two men popped out of the sunroof with mean looking machine guns, and the hummer pulled a perfect 180 and sped toward the army of wormheads.
“Godspeed,” Max whispered.
A half minute later the hummer erupted with gunfire and the wormheads covered the vehicle like attacking ants. A gap opened up between Max and the horde, and the caravan began to slow to take the turn. They all got through, but they were too slow, and by the time Max had gotten the truck back up to speed dozens of wormheads were on their ass again and gaining.
Max saw the lights of the military base up ahead, but the joy that surged in his heart was short lived. The wormheads had cut through the woods before the turn, and they now surged out from the underbrush by the hundreds. Like a tidal wave of dark scales and dripping fangs they descended on the caravan. In ten seconds it would all be over.
Valentine grabbed Max’s right hand and gripped it tight, and he offered her a supportive smile.
“We almost made it,” he told her, and a woman in the back seat mewled.
“Look!” Valentine yelled, pointing at the sky in front of them.
Max’s head snapped forward and he saw the thing that she pointed at. It was sleek and black and terrible, and fire erupted from its wings as it passed over head. Max rolled down the window and watched with the biggest smile that had ever stretched across his face as the apache helicopter tore into the army of wormheads with dozens of missiles.
“Fuck yeah!” Max screamed as a dozen balls of fire erupted in the rearview.
Chapter 14
Patient 27
Max was the last one to pass through the gates of Fort Drum, and he did he let out a sigh of relief. He had done it. He had reached Fort Dru in one piece, and finally, finally he would feel Piper in his arms. It seemed like a week since he had last seen her, but it had only been two days.
Two long days.
His body ached in a hundred different places, but he didn’t care. He was safe. Valentine was safe, and above all else, Spring and her brother were safe.
The caravan was led by a military hummer to a big hanger, and the many vehicles were guided to park. Max fell in line and put the truck in park and was about to get out when a man’s voice came over the P.A. system.
“Everyone, please remain in your vehicles!”
Most people would have headed the request, but not the Mohawk Militia. Men and women started to pour out of the many vehicles, and soldiers rushed in from all sides and aimed machine guns at them. An alarm went off, and Max leapt out of the truck.
“Hey, hey, everyone calm down!” he yelled, but there were a lot of people yelling, and the Mohawks had raised their weapons in return.
Max ran out to get between the two forces and held up his gun. “It’s a quarantine!” he yelled to the Militiamen. “They just want to make sure we’re not infected!”
“The sheriff is correct,” came the voice of the man in charge. Max saw him then, high up in a booth with two soldiers. Men in bio-suits had begun filing into the room, and long sheets of plastic were being drawn around the caravan. “Once you are cleared you will be given food, clean clothes, and a warm bed. Until then, keep your asses right where you are.”
Chooch walked over to Max looking pissed. “This is some bullshit, huh?”
“They’re just being sa—” Max blinked when he saw the man behind helped out of the truck up ahead. “John?”
The red-haired hockey player glanced around with darkened eyes. When they met Max’s he smiled wide. “The one and only!” he yelled back.
Max ran toward him and gave him a brotherly hug.
“Ugh, watch the side,” said John with a grimace of pain.
“Sorry, sorry,” said Max. “Shit man, I thought you’d been killed and dragged off into the woods.”
“Is that why you look like you’ve been crying?” John joked.
“Must be,” said Max with a laugh.
“I thought I was fucking dead too, Sheriff, to tell you the truth. But then a couple guys came back for me.” He turned around and pointed at two Mohawk men. “That’s Blake and Lance, they saved my ass.”
Max nodded at the men, and Valentine suddenly came running.
“John!” she cried and reached for him.
“He’s injured,” said Max, holding up a staying hand.
“Yes, be gentle,” said John, hugging her gingerly.
“I knew that you were alive, I fucking knew it!” She kissed his cheek and rustled his hair. She looked so excited that she might jump right out of her skin.
Max surveyed the survivors. Some of them looked as happy as Valentine, others still bowed their heads under the burden of their loss, and others cried. He counted seven children, including Spring and her brother, and tears of joy wet his cheeks. Maybe it was the violence, maybe it was discovering that John was alive, maybe Max was just tired, but he fell to his knees and he cried.
There was still hope.
There was still hope.
It took hours for the doctors to check everyone, and by the time it was Max’s turn it was nearing nine o’clock at night. He had slept of r a few hours, and he was happy that his sleep had been dreamless and blissfully quiet.
When his number came up he was led into a sectioned off biocontainment area and told to strip out of his clothes. A pair of doctors in lab coats took his blood, looked down his throat, and proceeded to give him a full cavity search. Max didn’t care, he just wanted to see Piper again.
He was told to dress in hospital whites and wait in the next room. The second room was much the same as the first, but instead of a chair it held a desk wrapped in plastic. Another doctor in a bio-suit awaited him, and gesture to the chair opposite himself.
“Please, have a seat,” said the man.
Max sat. “Am I going to get my Sheriff’s uniform back?”
The man stared, cocking an eyebrow.
“If not the uniform, I definitely want my badge.”
“Mr…Maelstrom, is it?”
“That, of Max, or Sheriff, whatever you prefer.”
“Mr. Maelstrom. I have a few questions for you, and I promise, it won’t take long. I imagine you are eager to get some rest.”
“I’m eager to see my wife.”
“Did she come with you?”
“No,” said Max, “I think she was brought here by the army.”
“Hmm, what is her name?”
“Piper Maelstrom,” said Max, and he thought he saw a spark of recognition in the man’s eyes. “Is she here?<
br />
The man looked guilty of something, and he ruffled through his papers. “I’m not aware. Now, for the survey…”
“You would have heard of her. She’s got red hair and lost her left arm. Would have come in with a bunch of others from Lake Placid.”
“Is that where you are from?” The man wrote something on his pad.
“Yes…so? Is she here?”
The doctor put down his pad and shifted uncomfortably. “Please, Mr. Maelstrom—”
“You know what? Call me Sheriff.”
“Sheriff, I will ask the questions for now.”
Max folded his arms and sat back in his chair. “Shoot.”
“Have you been in contact with anyone infected with the virus?”
“Virus? You mean space worm eggs?”
“Call it what you will.”
Max thought back on the first day when he had been bitten and linked up mentally to the Mother. The worm had lived in him for only a few seconds before he drank liquor to kill it…
“Mr. Maelstrom?”
“What? Oh, uh…”
“Sheriff,” said the doctor. “It is important that you tell us. We can’t have anyone in the general population who has—”
“Yeah, alright, fine. I was bitten by a screamer.”
“A Screamer?”
“Yeah, you know, the zombies from the first day? We called them screamers.”
The doctor nodded and scribbled on his pad.
“It’s not what you think,” said Max. “You see, I figured out how to cure people, I—”
“You say that you were bitten, but you didn’t turn?”
“Right, like I said, I discovered a cure for the—”
“A cure, what do you mean?”
“Damnit man let me speak!” Max slammed his fist down on the desk, and the doctor slunk back an inch, looking frightful. “As I was trying to say,” Max continued. “I was bitten, but I found a cure, it’s booze.”
“Booze?”
“Yeah, booze, or beer, wine, liquor, hell, cough syrup, that’s how the kids survived, fucking cough syrup. Are you telling me you brainiacs didn’t know this?”
The man scribbled on his pad some more and gestured for Max to continue. Max told the doctor everything, which took the better part of an hour. When he finished, the doctor let out a deep sigh. “That’s one hell of a story,” he said.
“So, you going to tell me if Piper is here or not?” said Max.
The doctor nodded, and his fingers typed out something on his computer pad. He scrolled through a long list of names and clicked on it. “Yes, your wife is here—”
“Great, bring me to her,” said Max.
“We can’t do that.”
“What? Why the hell not?”
“She and the rest of the group have not yet been cleared. They are still in quarantine.”
“Look, I already told you that I figured out a cure, they are not a threat anymore.”
“All do respect, Sheriff, but you do not know that. We need to run more tests for the safety of everyone here. I’m sure you understand.”
Max understood, but it didn’t make him any less pissed off. “Can I at least see her?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, but no.” The doctor turned around and called for the guards, and two soldiers in bio-suits walked in. They moved behind Max and waited.
“So, we’re all prisoners, is that it?”
“You are not prisoners.”
“Then I can leave?” said Max.
The doctor averted his eyes from Max’s steely gaze and gestured for the guards to escort Max out of the room. Each man took hold of one of Max’s arms, but he shrugged them off.
“This is bullshit! I demand to see my wife.”
“Please, Sheriff—” said the doctor as the two soldiers grabbed for Max again.
One of them pulled their sidearm, but Max spun toward the man and grabbed the pistol. He kneed the man in the crotch before twisting the gun out of the soldier’s grip. The other soldier lunged for the gun, and Max spun and kicked the man in the chest, sending him toppling over the doctor’s desk. Max turned the gun on the doctor.
“Take me to my wife. Right. Fucking. Now…”
Chapter 15
A Hard Won Loss
“Max!” The voice came from the P.A. Max glanced at the long mirror on the left side wall. He had recognized the voice, but only vaguely.
“Put the gun down, Maelstrom.” The voice was calm, and Max suddenly remembered where he had heard it before.
“Paul? Paul Lucas. That you?”
The door behind the terrified doctor opened, and a man in a bio-suit walked in. It was indeed Paul Lucas, Max’s old army buddy. The man looked older than Max remembered him, but there was no mistaking his fierce blue eyes.
“Good to see you, old friend. Why don’t you put that gun down and we’ll talk?”
Five minutes later they were walking along a catwalk that ran the length of the hanger. A wall of plastic hung to their right, and through it Max could see the many make-shift containment bio-containment rooms that held the survivors. Max recognized many of the hockey players from Lake Placid, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
If they were here, then so was Piper.
“You were the one on the P.A. before. What are you, the top dog of this place now?” said Max.
Inside his plastic helmet, Paul nodded. “Everyone above me who was stationed here is dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How many soldiers survived?”
“We’ve got thirty soldiers, and about a hundred suvilians including the group you came here with.”
“Then you’ve got one-hundred and thirty soldiers, Paul. These people are tough as nails.”
“I don’t doubt it, Max. But you can understand our caution. We can’t afford for one of you to suddenly chance into something unworldly. We’ve lost too many souls already.”
“How bad is it?” said Max, stopping to glance down at a room holding two young Asian girls. The sight of whataretheirnames? Did his heart good.
Paul let out a long sigh. “It’s bad. Estimates are 90% of the world’s population was infected in the initial attack, and we guess that another 7% have been killed since then.”
“Jesus…”
“Before the power went out and the satellites went down there were reports of widespread infection throughout all seven continents. Some outlying islands might have been missed by the spores that fell to earth on Saturday night and Sunday morning, but we haven’t heard anything yet.”
“And the president, congress? Do we still have a functioning government?”
“Affirmative. As soon as the attack began and it became apparent that we were under threat, the president was brought to a secure location.”
“Then what’s the plan? How do we win back the world?”
Paul hesitated to answer, and Max knew he wasn’t going to like what the man had to say.
“There is no plan of attack, Max. We’ve been ordered to find as many survivors as we can, and then take them to one of seven secure underground facilities.”
“Which one are we closest to?”
“It’s in Virginia.”
“Then what? Dig in until this whole thing blows over? The aliens have created queens, and the nasty bitches are laying thousands of eggs as we speak. We can’t just let them run—”
“They’re going to nuke the planet, Max.”
“What?” Max felt like someone had kicked him in the chest. The thought of earth being ravished by nuclear bombs made him feel sick to his stomach.”
“It’s the only way. We know about the queens. They’ve actually captured one at a facility in Maine. Aside from what you call wormheads, the queens are giving birth to other spores. The scientists only agree on one thing, these spores are changing the world rapidly. It is projected that within one year the flora and fauna of the earth will be unrecognizable.”
“So, if we can’t have it, no one can. Is that th
e idea?”
“Something like that,” said Paul.
They began to walk again, and Max was heartened to see Chooch and others from the Mohawk Militia being tended to below. Paul stopped a few moments later and pointed. Max followed the man’s gaze and his heart leapt when his eyes fell upon Piper. She lay in a hospital bed with an I’V. drip in her right arm. Her left was bandaged, and she looked to be sleeping.
Tears filled Max’s eyes and he wiped them on his sleeve. A weight was lifted from his shoulders then, and for the first time in days he relaxed.
“Thank you, Paul. Can I speak to her soon?”
“She’s sleeping now, but of course. I will arrange for you to share quarters.”
“How long until we’re all cleared? When do we leave for Virginia?”
“The nuclear event will occur in one week. We have until then to gather survivors and get them to the sight. You saved a lot of people, Max, you should be proud. You were not the only one to discover that alcohol could be used to kill the worms, and thanks to men and women like you, hundreds if not thousands have been saved. But we do not yet know whether or not people like you and your wife are still in danger of some kind of…transformation. It is going to take time.
“It doesn’t sound like we have much time,” said Max.
Paul acknowledged Max’s concerns with a pursed-lip nod. “We’re doing what we can.”
“And until we’re cleared?”
“You will remain in quarantine.”
“And if it is determined that we are not safe to join the general population?
Paul let out a sigh, and Max could sense his deep concern. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Max was allowed into Piper’s room shortly after. She was still sleeping, and her face looked fretful. She murmured in her sleep, tossing and turning as if haunted by a bad dream. He went to her side and took her hand in two of his and bent to kiss her on the forehead.
“Shhh, it’s alright, Piper. I’m here.”
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