by Tim McBain
She shoved me so hard I fell, landing on my ass. By the time I looked up, she was already lost in the mass of moving bodies.
The last of the horde were cramming themselves through the entrance, with a row of three camo uniforms encouraging them to get inside so the meeting could start.
My eyes searched frantically for Max, but he wasn’t among them. The soldiers seemed more imposing today. More dangerous. I didn’t know why that was. Because of what I’d found in the ruins of the quarantine tent? Because if Bennett had started that fire, then he’d almost certainly had help from one of them?
That might have been part of it, but there was something else.
Rifles. They all had their M4s slung over their shoulders. Before today, the only time I’d seen them with the rifles was during guard duty.
As the thought finally became clear, one of the trucks they’d managed to get working rumbled up to the doorway to the tent and stopped with a squeal of brakes. Jimbo parked the vehicle, hopped down from the driver’s seat, and joined his comrades.
Why would he park right in front of the door like that?
A pink-faced man and a little girl I assumed was his daughter approached the line of soldiers.
“Excuse us,” he said, but none of the men moved.
“Please take a seat, sir. The meeting will begin soon.”
“She needs to use the facilities,” the man explained, putting a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
“We’re not supposed to let anyone leave the tent. She’ll have to wait.”
The man’s face went from rosy to crimson. “That’s ridiculous! She needs to go, now!”
I suddenly had a very, very bad feeling about this.
I spun around and found myself staring into Sgt. Foressi’s reptilian eyes.
She seized my arm roughly and growled, “That was your third strike.”
I tried one last time to get her to listen.
“Something is wrong. The fire—”
Sgt. Foressi cut me off.
“I was going to give you one last chance, but I can see it would be a waste of time.”
I was close enough to smell her dragon breath. Bitter and sulphuric, just like her personality.
“No, you have to listen to me!”
Her fingers cinched around my bicep, digging into the muscle hard enough that I knew she’d leave bruises.
“After this meeting, you and I are going for a ride.”
“You’re hurting me,” I said, trying to tug my arm away.
Her grip only tightened, fingernails trying to pierce the flesh.
I yanked backward, and her claws scraped down my arm. She lunged at me, and I ducked, but she caught me by the hair.
“You’re not running off this time,” she hissed.
I didn’t think about my next action. I just reacted. My neck muscles coiled and popped like a spring as I lunged at her, face first. My lips parted, teeth open wide. I bit down on her arm as hard as I could.
She yelped, and the fist tangled in my hair retracted.
“I’m gonna wring your neck,” she breathed, reaching for her belt.
My first thought was: her gun. She was going for her gun.
A well-aimed kick from Izzy caused her knees to buckle, and Sgt. Foressi tumbled to the floor.
“Run, Erin!” Izzy screamed.
I turned, took a step, and then I heard the explosion of gunfire.
Erin
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
16 days after
I whirled around at the shots, not believing my ears. Was the Dragon Lady really shooting at me? Or at Izzy?
But when I saw what was happening, it was even worse than I’d thought.
The National Guardsmen barring the door had opened fire on the crowd.
Terrified screams answered the first gunshots. A dozen bodies crumpled and anyone not hit fled for the other end of the tent.
Behind me, Sgt. Foressi bellowed for the kids to get down. Whatever was happening, it appeared she wasn’t a part of it.
Another line of soldiers started shooting from the opposite side of the tent. Hemmed in on both sides, the crowd was like a roiling, churning sea.
My eyes landed on Izzy, who was standing a few yards ahead of me. She was frozen in place as a wall of people threatened to run her down. I darted forward, looped my hand around her wrist, and dove under one of the tables, yanking her in with me.
Two waves of panicked bodies crashed together, trampling those that got caught in the middle. From beneath the table, we watched someone go down under the human stampede. It was a woman, probably my mother’s age. One moment she was part of the charging pack. The next she lost her footing and fell under a hundred pounding feet. She wailed for a few beats, and then she was silent and still.
Izzy clung to me, her eyelashes matted together with tears.
“What are they shooting at?”
“Us,” I said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
One thing had become clear to me as I replayed the events from the last few minutes. The big important meeting, the truck parked in front of the door, the man and little girl they wouldn’t allow to leave.
They were going to kill everyone. Already the floor was littered with bodies, and they were still firing.
More gunshots rang out, close this time. I peered out from under the table and could see the pair of boots attached to the shooter. A nearby thud drew my attention to the left. A man flopped to the ground and thick, red blood oozed from the wounds on his chest.
Combat boots clumped toward our hiding spot, and I felt my heart rate quicken. This was it. He was going to find us.
It was Sgt. Foressi that saved the day. She rose to her feet.
“Stand down, private!” she ordered. Her voice was strong and clear. I would have been shaking like a leaf.
The boots halted.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I need to get these children somewhere safe—”
Her words were cut off by the spray of bullets. Like angry metal teeth, they spewed out of the gun and bit into her flesh. Into the chairs. Into the table. Into the dozen small bodies concealed there.
The man didn’t stop shooting until they were all dead.
I held Izzy’s face to my chest, not wanting her to see. Not wanting her to make a sound.
“Hey Jimbo, you got any more ammo?” someone called.
The voice attached to the man I’d just witnessed slaughtering Sgt. Foressi and twelve children answered.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “I got loads.”
Jimbo stalked away to the other side of the tent, and I felt a rush of saliva in my mouth as the nausea hit me.
I knew Jimbo. Maybe not well, but I’d talked to him. Laughed with him.
How could this happen? And where was Max?
Ice water filled my veins as a familiar voice rose above the fray.
“Gather up the stragglers and line ‘em up over here.”
It was Bennett.
The soldiers began dragging people out from whatever hiding spots they’d been lucky enough to find. I could hear them begging for their lives. They’d be coming for us soon.
This was it. Time for action. Sgt. Foressi had given us one last chance, but I had to make it count.
“Izzy, come over here.”
I gestured for her to follow me to the side of the table closest to the man who’d been shot right before Sgt. Foressi made her stand.
A pool of black-red blood surrounded the body, and after only a heartbeat of hesitation, I plunged my hand into the puddle. It was still warm. I smeared it on myself first, coating my face and bare arms and chest, making sure I got plenty on my clothes. And then I did the same to Izzy.
Next, I directed her to lie down. I did my best to shield her with my body, and then I pulled the dead man’s leg and arm up over us.
Izzy’s face was tucked under my chin, and I whispered instructions in her ear.
“
We’re playing a game, OK?”
“A game?”
“Yep. That’s all this is. The point of the game is to close your eyes and play dead. Can you do that?”
“I think so.”
“It’s really easy. You just have to be super quiet and super still. And if you feel me squeeze your hand like this—” I tightened my grip on her fingers. “—then that means hold your breath. Don’t take a big deep breath before you do it, either. Just freeze. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“OK. The game starts now.”
Delfino
Outside of New Bern, North Carolina
4 years, 50 days after
Hellickson’s scream cut out. It seemed like it should be a mercy, but it wasn’t.
The pile of dead throbbed and lurched atop him, something savage and almost sexual in their intense thrusting and moaning.
My chest hitched as though to breathe, but the wind wouldn’t come. It was like the back of my throat was all cinched up.
I backpedaled without thought. It felt like something in a movie. The camera slowly zooming out, pulling away from the horror.
None of the images before me made sense anymore. The mess of limbs and torsos and mewling mouths. All of these writhing body parts slicked with black muck. It almost looked like a new creature made from all of the others. Something hideous and deformed.
And the smell of swamp was everywhere. And I could feel liquid squishing around in my gut, an angry intestinal sea. And some part of me remembered that I should go now — right now.
I ran.
I wished that I could never stop running.
The black sludge men didn’t follow, so I gathered a few things from my cabin and ran some more. I had no destination in mind. Just away from here.
I bashed out into the woods, branches and stalks and stems whipping me with every step.
I ran until my lungs caught fire and let them burn and burn. I ran until my side ached and my face flashed with alternating bursts of hot and cold and my chest spasmed in some panicked attempt to take in oxygen faster. And I ran some more.
Never stop. That’s what I told myself over and over.
When I started vomiting, I stopped running. Not right away. I ran a few paces while heaving, but I choked on bile, and crumpled to the ground at last, coughing and gasping and the world kind of going dark and blurry around me.
Yellow goop poured out of me in waves. Burnt my throat. Made water flood my eyes.
When the last of it had exited my mouth hole, I lay back in the brush.
Ferns reached shaky arms out to cover me. It didn’t feel like any kind of embrace, though. More funereal somehow.
My lungs felt wet and heavy and useless, but they heaved breath in and out of me anyway.
I thought about Linda and the kids, and pictures opened in my head. Eating lunch up at the Hellickson house with them, Linda pulling something delicious out of the pizza oven, that clever smile curling just the corners of her mouth. Helping set up that little badminton court for ‘em, the kids slowly getting the hang of letting their racket find the birdie without thinking about it.
I didn’t realize that I was crying until the sound of my own sobs startled me. That was kind of fucked. The shock had shut off my emotions somehow, my heart severed from my mind. Some combination of mourning and fright, but I couldn’t feel it at all. It was like I was far away from it.
The ferns trembled along with the rhythm of my whimpers, and I felt further and further away from myself, from this experience, from this reality.
I could only feel the air rushing in and out of me, stinging in my gullet, and the hot tears ringing my eyelids, cascading over my cheekbones.
I think I lay there a long time. Crying and breathing and thinking.
And now I’m still here. Sitting up. Writing. Human feelings creeping back into my consciousness little by little.
I imagine sometimes a brush with awful death makes one grateful to be here, grateful to survive and advance in the game of life. But no. Not this time.
I pretty much want to die.
Erin
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
16 days after
Over the rush of blood in my ears, I listened to the tear-choked voices pleading for mercy. Bennett ignored each one of them, issuing orders to his men with impossible coolness.
“Hold on, I got another one over here.”
“Please!” A woman moaned. “Please don’t do this!”
“Get her up, Kulik! Let’s get this done,” Bennett said, as if he were ordering them to dig foxholes instead of committing mass murder.
We huddled there for what seemed like hours before Bennett gave the command. Beneath me, Izzy didn’t move a muscle.
“Ready. Aim. Fire!”
Half a dozen automatic rifles opened fire. The noise was so coarse and violent it sounded like the fabric of the universe ripping apart.
And then it was over.
In the eerie silence that followed, over the ringing in my ears, Bennett spoke.
“Alright, do one more pass. Make sure we didn’t miss anyone.”
Someone else chimed in. It sounded like he was chuckling.
“Trust me, sir. Anybody who managed to get out of the tent got cut in goddamn half by the .50 cal. Total horror show in the grass out there.”
Heavy footsteps echoed through the space.
“This is it,” I whispered to Izzy. “This is for all the marbles.”
I doubt she even knew what that meant. I barely do. But I felt her go slack beside me, and I did the same.
“Aww jeez,” someone said. “Look at this guy’s fucking face! It’s all blown apart, but he’s still moving!”
“Quit fucking around, and kill the motherfucker,” Bennett ordered.
Two quick rounds exploded out of the man’s rifle.
A pair of thudding boots drew closer. My hand pressed on Izzy’s, and we both held our breath.
I could feel my pulse twitter in my ears, hear the almost sucking sound of blood jetting through all those tiny vessels. And I could feel the weight of my body settling on my rib cage and tugging a little at all those limp strands of muscle along my spine, and the pointy part of my cheekbone stung where it pinched my skin against the ground.
And for the first time, it was real. Not just the massacre in this tent. All of it. The plague. The apocalypse. My mom’s death. All of the death.
It was real.
It made all of the stuff with Breanne and Max seem so stupid. So childish.
And I was so, so scared. So small.
The urge to peek through one eyelid, to try to see how close they were, was almost impossible to resist. But I thought of how I’d explained it to Izzy. That we were playing a game.
And so I played.
Dead girls can’t open their eyes. So I didn’t.
Dead girls can’t breathe. So I didn’t.
Dead girls can’t move. So I didn’t.
The corpse I’d crawled under suddenly shifted as one of the soldiers nudged him with a boot. I’m convinced the only reason I didn’t screech with terror is because I was so deep in the game.
I was a dead girl, and dead girls can’t scream.
“Think we got ‘em all, chief,” one of the guys said.
“Good. Let’s make sure they got anyone that wasn’t inside the meeting,” Bennett said.
“Oh shit. Looks like Martinez got hit by friendly fire.”
“Martinez was a bitch,” Bennett answered.
Another voice piped up, this one more meek than the others.
“What… what are we gonna do with them? With the bodies.”
“You into necrophilia or something, Rocko?”
A couple of the guys laughed.
“No,” Rocko stuttered. “I meant… Are we going to bury them, or what?”
“Who gives a fuck?” Bennett answered. “I ain’t digging a hole big enough for all of them to fit in, but if you want to, be my guest.�
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“We could burn ‘em.”
Bennett snapped his fingers.
“Good idea. Can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.”
I’d been planning on staying put and waiting them out until dark, figuring no one would have much reason to return to the tent if everyone inside was presumed dead. But if they torched the tent, we’d be fucked.
“Jimbo, get that truck out of the way.”
“On it, chief.”
The truck door opened with a rusty creak, and then the roar of the diesel engine drowned out everything else for some time. Rousing myself from make-believe death, I cracked one eyelid and glanced around. There was no one in our immediate vicinity. No one alive, anyway.
Still I waited to move. As the roar of the truck faded, I could pick out voices again.
Two soldiers hovered near the door, rehashing the massacre in jovial tones that made me want to scratch their eyes out.
“I shot this girl right in the tits, man. A bullet in each nip.”
“Yeah, well I got this guy across the neck. Hit his jugular and the artillery spray was insane.”
“Artillery? Bro, it’s arterial.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. Like artery… arterial.”
“Huh.”
I pressed my mouth to Izzy’s ear and said, “Just a little while longer. You’re doing great.”
And then I ran through our options.
Ever since they’d mentioned one of their guys being inadvertently shot in the melee, I’d wondered if anyone had bothered to pick up his gun. And Sgt. Foressi also had her pistol.
But getting to either one of them would likely mean crawling in plain view of the men at the door. Even if they left, the idea of crossing that distance and then having to pass through a door seemed too risky.
So I began searching for alternatives.
I slid the dead man’s limbs off of me. Gently, of course, so as not to make any noise or too much movement. And then I rolled away from Izzy and studied the tent wall.
We were lucky to be in a tent, really. We could crawl right under the canvas and be free. Assuming we didn’t slither right into a group of waiting soldiers.
I told Izzy my plan, and we began to squirm slowly over the ground, keeping close to the edge of the tent. I kept glancing back at the door, making sure neither of the men turned back to look at us. We were able to make it all the way to the far back corner of the tent undetected.
