by Ben Reeder
“Your turn,” I said to Kaplan. He gave a weary sigh as he understood what I was planning and put his weight on the pole as he came to join us. Once he was out a couple of feet, he bent down and rested his weight on his hands and gingerly walked himself forward until his feet were resting in the pole and he was holding himself up over the fence on his arms. I pushed myself up and Hernandez followed suit, then we kicked our feet off the pole and hit the fence with the toes of our boots almost in unison. Wire screeched and popped, and the middle of the fence sagged. Hernandez held herself still as Kaplan and I kicked up again, and more wire popped as Kaplan’s side of the fence gave way, taking him and Hernandez down with it and pulling my end down under their combined weight. I held on for dear life as we swung down, but once we hit the bottom of the arc, my grip was pulled loose and I went tumbling onto the grass. When I rolled to my feet, I could see Kaplan picking himself up a few feet away, but Hernandez had managed to hang on with her good hand, and was swinging on the fence about three feet off the ground.
“Owned by a girl!” Amy called from the helipad.
“By a Marine, chica,” Hernandez said before she let go and dropped to the ground. “Owned by a Marine! Now get your skinny little ass down here before we get swarmed.” Amy tossed her spear to the ground, climbed down the dangling length of fence like a spider and retrieved the weapon. In the shadow of the hospital, I could see shambling figures headed our way.
“Let’s go, people,” Kaplan said. “It looks more residential south of here. We’ll find a place to hole up for the night.” He took off, and Amy followed him at my gesture. I fell in behind her and Hernandez dropped in behind me. To the rear, the first of the zombies started moving in earnest. He led us across the grass to the street, then turned right and across another street so we were beside a raised section on our left. Across the street on our right was a parking garage. Kaplan kept us on the left side of the street as we went up the gentle slope to the first cross street. That left us with a white building with a red trim on our left and a line of widely spaced trees between us and lots of open space to our right. Running with fifty pounds of gear made me grateful for the slight downhill slope, though the uneven ground we were jogging on did my feet and knees no favors. Another street found us running by a set of apartment buildings, and in the fading light Kaplan didn’t see the zombie wandering down the sidewalk in front of him until it was almost too late. My only warning was the three coughing reports, then I was jogging by a freshly re-killed infected. It was another block before we started seeing houses, and another block past that before we found a house that Kaplan was happy with; a two story stone affair with a fireplace and a “For Sale By Owner” sign out front. Amy and I waited while he led Hernandez in to clear it. Ten minutes later, she came out and pronounced in a bad accent “This house…is clean.”
Chapter 4
Dark Before Dawn
~ Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. ~ Albert Einstein.
There was a difference between finding a good place to hole up, and actually making it into one. The average house is a terrible fortress, with multiple windows and doors creating huge gaps in the outer perimeter. Against people with guns and a serious desire to get inside, the average home was a death trap, even for a place with windows six feet off the ground. Against zombies in numbers less than a hundred, the little place we’d found was adequate. With some work.
I did a final check of that work, hoping I didn’t miss anything in the dark as I walked around the outside of the house. The back windows showed no light, and the back door was blocked with the refrigerator in the kitchen. I lowered the night vision goggles Kaplan had given me into place as I walked around the right side of the house, thankful for the spec ops helmet as much for keeping my head warm in the cool night as for being a convenient mount for the NVGs. The road was still empty, and the house on my right didn’t show any movement. I looked back to my left for any light escaping from the windows in the front room, but they were still dark. At the front of the house, I turned left and checked the improvised barrier we’d made for the porch. We’d pushed three vehicles against the porch, with a Suburban in the middle since it was the only one we could find that covered the front steps. On either side of it was a hatchback and a minivan, their rear ends up against the Suburban’s flattened back tires to make an inverted T against the porch.
I tested the junction points but with the tires flattened none of the vehicles was likely to move anywhere soon. The left side of the house was even more barren than the right, with only one window off the front room and none beyond a small bathroom window further back. I went back to the front porch and climbed up the side using the rounded stones for purchase for my boots. Hernandez turned my way from her post behind the low wall, her own face half hidden by her goggles. Once she was certain it was me, she turned back to watching the road.
“I been meaning to ask you,” she said when I squatted down beside her. “What was the deal with you and the guy back there in Nevada?”
“He was Amy’s father,” I said after a moment.
“That was what I thought,” she said. “No offence, but you and her don’t look anything alike. That and the different last names.”
“Yeah,” I said with a chuckle. “It’s hard to explain that part some times. There’s no term for it, you know?”
“I know it’s rough, losing someone you love like that.”
“God, yes. I’m not sure how to help her deal with that.”
“What about you?” she asked. She turned toward me and pulled the goggles up. “Are you gonna be okay? Because as much as I don’t like the touchy feely crap, I don’t want you losing it when shit gets serious because you lost your husband or partner or whatever.” Suddenly, the whole conversation made a different kind for sense to me, and I pulled my own goggles up.
“I’m dating Amy’s mother, Hernandez. Not her father.”
“Oh,” she said. For a moment there was silence, then I heard a suppressed snort come from her. “Sorry,” she said after a moment.
“For thinking I was gay? It’s not the kind of thing that pisses me off or makes me question my manhood. Besides, I've killed more infected in the past few days than Chuck Norris. Gay or straight, I’m pretty damn secure in my masculinity."
"Well, some guys would think..." she said, letting the sentence trail off.
"I didn't," I said, and gave her a smile. "And thanks for asking." For a few moments we sat there quietly. As awkward as the conversation had almost gone, it had let me know that to Hernandez, I wasn’t just a civilian any more. I wasn’t a Marine, but we’d fought together.
“Looks quiet,” she finally said. “Let’s head in.” We went back to the door, and she grabbed a cardboard box filled with crumpled up paper that was sitting beside the screen door. She scattered the contents across the porch before we slipped in through the heavy blanket that was nailed inside the doorway. Amy and Kaplan had nailed blankets over the windows and doors to hide what little light the fire in the stone fireplace gave off. After the chilly October air, the room was almost hot with the assault vest and helmet on. The helmet came off as soon as we stepped into the room, and I started stripping the vest off right after that. Kaplan had already taken his off, and Hernandez shucked hers faster than I did mine.
“Let’s eat, then get our weapons cleaned before lights out,” Kaplan said, pulling his pack closer. Amy gave me a questioning look and reached for the cache tube. I shook my head. Maya had given me a new rule back in Springfield, and I was considering adding it to the list: Use what’s around you before you dig into your own supplies. As good as our homemade MREs were, I wanted to use the First Strike Ration packs Kaplan had given us before I used mine, and there was another resource to draw from before that.
“Lieutenant, there’s still a little food in the pantry here,” I said. “We should use that first.”
“No power,” Kaplan pointed out. “Most of what they hav
e needs to be cooked.”
“I have that covered,” I told him as I got to my feet and headed for the kitchen. I searched the pantry and drawers until I had found a few things that I could turn into a couple of meals, and more importantly, into a small stove. I grabbed a large coffee can, a can of cream of chicken soup, a couple of cans of chicken chunks and a five pound bag of rice. Finally, I took a cooking pot and a box of sandwich baggies and headed for the living room again.
“That doesn’t look very appetizing,” Hernandez said as I sat down and pulled the Tainto from my belt sheath.
“Patience, my young padawan,” I said. “All will be revealed in time.” The first thing I did was grab a baggie and start pouring coffee grounds into it. It took two baggies to finish off the whole thing. Then I took to the can with the knife. The aluminum was no match for the Tainto’s 5160 steel point, and in a few seconds I had three sides of a square cut near the base of the can. The metal side bent inward easily enough, and I had a one inch opening at the bottom of the can. I punched a few smaller holes near the top and bottom, then sheathed the knife and pulled my cache tube over and got my survival tin out of it. Inside, nestled with the button compass, fishing kit, magnifying lens, iodine tablets, and other necessities was a pair of emergency knives made from a cut down hacksaw blade wrapped with duct tape. On one I had filed the flat side down to razor sharpness, and the other I had left alone so I could use it solely for its original purpose. A few minutes of cutting allowed me to bend down a few strips toward the inside of the can as a makeshift grill top for pots that were smaller than the coffee can.
“I’ll be damned,” Hernandez said. “A hobo stove. I used to see the homeless guys cooking on them all the time back home.”
“Easy to make, easy to clean,” I said. While I could have gone outside and gathered twigs for fuel, we had several logs already to hand, so all I had to do was cut some bark and some long, narrow pieces from the sides and break them down so they’d fit. I cut some partial shavings out of the sides of a few pieces, leaving the wood curling away but not completely separated. A couple of pages from the phone book stuffed in the bottom served as kindling, with the bark and a few larger twigs on top of that.
“That’s cheating,” Amy said when I lit one of the smaller twigs from the fire and used it to ignite the kindling.
“No such thing right now,” I said as the fire blazed in the little can. “There’s only what works, and what doesn’t. And this…works.” While it heated up, I opened the can of soup with my P-38 and set the pan on top, then dumped the soup and chicken in, followed by a can of water. Then all I could do was wait and stir. Once it started to boil, I pulled it off the little fire and dumped in a double handful of the rice, stirred it in, then covered it with a plate.
“Let that sit for a few minutes, then we can dig in,” I said. While we waited, I dumped the rice from the bag it came in into a couple of the resealable bags and stowed them in my pack, along with the last two cans of chicken, a couple of cans of tuna and a box of mac and cheese that I’d stripped down and dumped into another baggie. “This won’t last us very long, but there are some eggs and enough bread I can make us breakfast tomorrow,” I said.
Amy grabbed some plastic bowls from the kitchen and we doled out the thick, gooey concoction. For a few minutes no one spoke as everyone tried their first taste. Kaplan promptly doused his with a little container of hot sauce and pepper, while Hernandez covered hers with salt. Amy made a face and doubled up with salt and pepper, while I just ate mine plain.
“That was pretty hard core, rushing that big son-of-a-bitch back there, chica,” Hernandez said between bites a few minutes later. “Stupid as hell, but hard core.” Amy blushed and ducked her head.
“Well, he’s supposed to marry my Mom,” she said after a moment. “I couldn’t let him off the hook.”
“Well, at least one of us is going to make it out of Kansas City,” Kaplan said with laughter in his voice.
“He might wish he hadn’t,” Hernandez said. I sat back and let Amy hold her own with the two Marines. Even after we finished eating, the verbal sparring didn’t let up, continuing as we cleaned our weapons by firelight and flashlight and reloaded spent mags. I showed Amy how to strip down the Ruger and clean the revolver before I stripped down my weapons and cleaned the sword. She’d already reloaded the magazines she’d gone through, and the smile she gave me when I offered her a heart-felt “Good job!” melted me all over again. The pipe we’d used to make her makeshift spear was bent, and one of the ZT Spikes had broken about an inch from the tip, so we stripped them off.
“Okay, everyone, let’s get this area policed and get upstairs in ten,” Kaplan said. We grabbed our gear and stuffed everything in our packs as quickly as we could then headed for the stairs. To get to the upper level required a ladder now, since we’d taken up the bottom half of the stairwell by prying the steps up. By the time we’d done that, removing the bannister was easy. Messy, but easy. Amy went up first and stepped onto the solid step with me right behind her. The last five steps creaked under our feet as we went up to the landing, and we heard the ladder being pulled up behind us as we made our way down the hallway behind the circles of blue light our LED flashlights provided. The bedroom we’d chosen to bunk down in was at the front of the house with windows facing toward the street and to the right side of the house. The box spring for the king sized bed had been set over the side window, and several layers of drapes covered the front window.
As soon as we got in the door, Amy headed for the pile of blankets and pillows on the mattress that was shoved in the corner. Kaplan came in behind us and pointed me to the bed while he went to a neatly laid blanket on the floor near the front window. Hernandez headed for the bedroom beside us.
“You’ll take last watch,” he told me as he set his gear down in a neat stack by his blankets. I nodded and laid my own vest and weapons by the edge of the bed where I could reach them. Once I was sure I could grab either of my pistols or the Deuce without looking, I pulled the bottle of pain reliever I’d liberated from the downstairs bathroom from my pocket and downed three of the little pills before I lay back and waited for sleep to come.
I was awakened by a whimper in the darkness. Instantly I came up on my right elbow and listened. Another soft mewl came from behind me, and I rolled to my other side and reached out in the darkness.
“Amy,” I whispered. The whimpering stopped, and I felt Amy’s hand brush mine. As soon as her fingers touched my hand, she grabbed my arm and pulled herself to me.
“I keep seeing him fall,” she whispered to me. “I try to hold onto him, but I can’t and he falls, he always falls.” The sobs came after that, quiet at first but hard enough to wrack her whole body. Finally, she couldn’t keep silent any more, and I felt my chest vibrate as she bawled into my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Amy,” I said to her over and over again, wishing every time I knew something better to say, but never finding anything else to tell her. Eventually, even that faded, and she fell quiet again, and laid her head on my now damp shoulder. Her breathing became slow and even, and I held her quietly. It was all the comfort I could offer her, and even if my arms went numb and fell off, I’d give her every second of it she wanted. I wished for a thousand things in the indeterminate time that I held her, but it all kept coming back to two things, one I could never give her, and one I could only hope to. I wanted to give her Karl back, but in the end, my prayer was simple: let me be a good dad for her. Yeah, simple. Just not easy.
When sleep caught up to me again, it was a stealthy ninja, because the next thing I knew someone was tapping my foot. I came up out of a dark, dreamless sleep to see Kaplan standing at the foot of my makeshift bed. He had his LED light on low, and he was barely visible in the soft blue light. As soon as my eyes focused, he tilted his head toward the door and walked away. I carefully pulled myself away from Amy and picked up my vest and gun belt, then grabbed the rifle once I had them on. Kaplan was waiting for me
in the hallway.
“How’s she doing?” he asked. I shrugged.
“About as good as can be expected for a girl who just lost her father during the zombie apocalypse,” I said.
“As long as she keeps it together,” he said. “There’s movement on the street, so keep an eye out for infected coming into the yard. If it looks like they’re going to make contact or if you think they see us, don’t try to handle it yourself. Come wake me up. Your shift ends at oh-seven-hundred.” He turned and went into the room, leaving me wondering when I’d enlisted as I headed for the other bedroom. The watch post was set up a few feet from the window, giving me a view of the street without being visible. I set my rifle on the pillows that had been laid atop a set of dressers and then checked the view outside.
The sky overhead glowed a dark red, and off in the distance I heard the dull thud of an explosion. Off to the southwest, part of the sky got a little brighter. The light from a thousand fires kept the night from being pitch black, and I didn’t need the NVGs to see the zombies moving in the street. Mostly, they shuffled toward the hospital, but a couple wandered off the road. One wandered into a house across the way, but it came out a little bit later and stumbled on. A little while later, I saw another one negotiate the front steps of a house and start pushing at the front door. Eventually it cracked and opened, and the zombie wandered inside.
After that I stopped watching them so closely. I had enough fuel for my nightmares; I didn’t need to add to it. Instead, I pulled out the MP3 player and recorder I’d found in the Monos lab and stuck one of the earbuds in my ear, then queued up the first entry while I watched for anything coming into the yard of our bolt hole.
“Executive summary,” I heard a crisp female voice come over the earphone. “Simplified version for the suits in St Louis, someone created a monster. The Asura virus is all but unstoppable so far. Every attempt to stop it or slow it down just seems to give it an excuse to mutate in new and unusual ways. Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy who were infected with the Asura virus saw almost immediate metastasis and massive spread of tumors, with an abnormally high incidence of random cellular cohesion resulting in bones and organs being replicated in the tumors themselves. It also creates massive production of growth hormone, creating a form of acromegaly. The AS7 immuno-booster administered to health care workers either had no significant impact or caused a mutation in the virus that allowed them to somehow affect other infected. Dr. Shigara theorizes that the medical profession may draw people who are naturally empathic and that this otherwise latent ability is the root cause of the very vocal first stage infected we’ve encountered on lower floors. Before seeing Patient Alpha, I would have discounted his theory completely, but he’s been ordered to follow up on this line of inquiry. We will continue to conduct putrefaction tests, but I doubt we’re going to see significant progress along those lines for some time. Nothing survives contact with this thing, especially not bacteria. Per my previous entries, we’ve made some strides in identifying what the virus does, but not how it does it. Once introduced to a host, the Asura virus suppresses uptake of melatonin and serotonin. In layman’s terms, it makes the infected host constantly hungry and unable to feel sated. This also induces a constant rage state after a few hours, making the host prone to violence. However, there is one thing I am certain of: this bug is bioengineered. We’ve discovered markers that indicate its DNA has been spliced with something. Whoever did this was using some highly advanced techniques. If it wasn’t for our own strides in this field, we would never have found the DNA tampering. If I didn’t know better, I would almost say that the Asura virus isn’t actually a …what the hell was that? Damn it, we’re not supposed to be evacuated for another forty-eight hours. That better not be that bastard Sikes again…” The recording stopped with the sound of the device being set down. For the next hour or so, I listened to the other recordings, mostly scientific gibberish to me. What I could understand, I wrote down on a pad of paper I found in one of the pockets on my vest, using the dresser drawers to cover the blue glow of the LED flashlight. None of it was pretty.
