Sergeant Major Dawson squared his shoulders. “It will be an honor, Sir.”
“Mavis, are you sure you don’t want to come here?” Papers shuffling came over the line. “It’ll save us a lot of time. Every minute will count if this thing crosses the ocean.”
“I’m claustrophobic.” She rubbed the goosebumps from her arm and opened her mortality modeling program. “No way are you packing me sixty feet underground with a hundred other people, quadruple bunked and breathing recycled air.”
Gamma Base was just another name for mass tomb.
“That’s filtered, recycled air,” Miles sighed. “And there’s lots of space in the labs.”
“I suck at bench work.” She cracked her knuckles while the program loaded. Soon a picture of the U.S. filled her screen. “Now leave me alone.”
“I’ll have my secretary send you the finishing school literature,” Miles chuckled. “Colonel Lynch make certain Dr. Spanner gets all the assistance she needs, and I’ll make certain the President himself places a commendation in your file.”
The officer straightened and smoothed his rumpled, stained uniform. “Yes, sir.”
“Mavis,” Miles voice downshifted into resignation. “Call me with the projection as soon as it’s finished. I need to know if humanity is facing an extinction level event.”
Chapter Ten
Manny braced one palm against the door as it swung slightly open. Eyes straining, he tried to decipher the shadows—people? Plants? Beyond the empty carport, the world was a study of silver and gray. Shifting and moving, but not rushing forward to swallow him in nothingness.
“Irina?” His hiss accompanied the rustle of leaves.
A scrape on the ground jerked his attention to the cement pad.
“Here.” Hiding into the darkness sucking at the edge of the house, a large mound unfurled into spindly limbs and a thin torso. “Help me get him inside.”
A limp arm fell in Manny’s direction. He caught the chilled flesh and bone, before crouching lower and moving his hand up to the damp armpit. “What happened?”
“The Aspero.” Irina sobbed and straightened in the moonlight—a sharp angled version of once lush curves.
Manny’s heart lurched and the shockwave rattled out his extremities. God, she had become so thin. Had the gangbangers done this to her?
“I’ll get him, Rini.” Releasing the door, Manny locked his hands around the narrow chest and lifted. Wetness coated his forearms as he stepped backward, dragging the boy with him. “Just get inside.”
Irina crawled forward. Her shoulder brushed his calve as she passed. “No one’s called me Rini since…”
Since her brother died.
Manny hadn’t seen her in the hospital. And as soon as he’d been discharged, he’d been remanded into police custody. Only the fact that he hadn’t been driving the stolen car had prevented him from being tried for manslaughter. His foot caught on the waistband of a pair of jeans and he stumbled. Clothes sucked at him and his burden as he fell. Air left his lungs as the weight of the boy landed atop him. Manny stared at the dark ceiling while his body remembered how to breathe. “Close and lock the door behind us.”
“Okay.” Irina rose up on her knees to shuffle forward. With one arm wrapped around her waist, she leaned into the night, caught the door knob and pulled the door closed. She collapsed alongside Manny. “I think I locked it.”
Releasing his hands, Manny rolled the boy between himself and Irina. He used the edge of the washer to pull himself to his feet and reached for the dead bolt. His fingers brushed the key before he twisted it. It didn’t turn.
“Yeah, it’s locked.” Manny leaned his forehead against the cold wooden plank, before clawing up the door to stare out the peephole. A plastic garbage bag tumbled down the street. Nothing but garbage moved in the moonlight.
“Did they follow us?”
A hand brushed Manny’s pant leg.
He hitched up his loose jeans, before pulling away from the door. “Doesn’t look like it.”
But seeing nothing didn’t count for much these days. It was only a matter of time before the Aspero found him. His insides jumped and bitterness flooded his mouth.
Unless he moved.
Manny bent down and picked up the boy. His thighs burned as he straightened. “Are you hurt?”
“Not as bad as Stash.” In the dark laundry room, Irina hissed before her elbow brushed his side. “He rushed to Basia’s defense.”
Three people, yet only two people were at his door.
“What happened to your grandmother?” Balancing on one leg, Manny propped his knee against Stash’s back and juggled his weight.
After a whisper of fabric, light filtered into the small room. Still clutching her side, Irina stood in the doorway. Streaks glistened on her cheek. “Basia’s dead.”
Manny blinked the sting from his eyes. Irina’s plump grandmother had visited him every Saturday at Adobe Mountain. She’d told him bad jokes in her thick Polish accent and baked him cherry kolaches. Pain radiated from his chest. “Why did they have to kill her? Your grandmother always shared everything she had.”
Turning sideways, Manny squeezed through the doorway and into short hallway leading to the kitchen.
“Basia managed to get rice and beans from Mr. Taylor before the Aspero.” Behind him, Rini’s shoes squeaked on the Saltillo tile.
Rice and beans. Manny’s stomach growled as if he smelled them cooking. “I can’t believe Mr. Taylor shared.”
All Manny’s life, the old man had yelled at him for cutting through his yard on the way to school. Like the grass wouldn’t grow back if he stepped on it. To think the guy had actually shared food when his supplies must be low like everyone else’s.
“He didn’t have a choice. The soldiers gave him the job of distributing the food for the neighborhood.”
The soldiers had kept distributing food? Yet, he hadn’t gotten his share. The niños had been eating half the allotted amount for days. Why had no one told him? Manny jerked to a stop. “What?”
Irina bumped into his back. “Geez, Manny. At least warn me if you’re going to stop.”
Turning slightly, he swiped at the light switch on the wall. He squeezed his eyes closed against the brightness. “How long had this been going on?”
“Two weeks.” She set her hand on his back. “Didn’t you see the notice at the drop-off point?”
“No.” There had been nothing—no sign, no notice, nobody. He’d have noticed. He’d stood there three days straight waiting for the soldiers, praying for food.
“The Aspero did. They demanded half of it for their protection.”
Manny snorted. People needed protection from the gang.
“This week they came for it all. Said we would have to buy the food.”
Manny’s mouth watered. There’d been canned beef sometimes. The niños could have used the protein. “Buy the food? Who has money?”
“Not money. They wanted Basia to give me to them.” Irina’s voice hitched.
Red tinged Manny’s vision. They’d wanted Rini? She was just a girl!
“Basia took the rice and ran, but they caught her. Stash went to help. I… I hid, watching until…” She covered her face with her hands. “When they left, I went over to my cousin.”
“So you weren’t…” The word stuck in his throat. He couldn’t say it, wouldn’t say it.
“Raped?” She sniffed. “No, the puntas didn’t want me around. So instead of bringing me to the Aspero, they had a little fun, and then let me go.”
Why had the Redaction killed so many good people, yet left the animals like the Aspero alive? Blowing out his frustration, he strode through the living room. His arms and legs started to tingle. Stash was getting heavy. “Knock once on the ceiling, and count to two, and then rap three more times.”
“Who do you have up there?”
“Jose, Lucia, Mary and Michael.” The tingling in his back changed to bolts of pain. Gritting his teeth,
he kept walking. Stash would need a bed and tending. The light would be better in his parents’ old room. He just had to make it to the end of the hall.
“Mary and Michael are here?” Rini whistled low. “Basia and Mr. Taylor wondered what had happened to them.”
Not enough to ask him. Or tell him about the food. Manny sidled through the door and scraped the switch with his shoulder. The overhead fan wobbled before settling down to a soft purr just as single CFL hummed to life. “Maybe they should have looked a little harder.”
He glanced down and almost dropped Stash. Blood foamed from the two holes in the boy’s thin chest and coated his pale skin in a veneer of red. As for what was left of his face…
Nausea roared at the back of Manny’s throat. They must have used something other than their fists and boots to turn the boy’s face into such a mess. Clamping his lips together, he swallowed the bile souring his mouth.
Manny lowered him to the comforter covering his parents’ queen-sized bed and reached for the landline on the nightstand.
Irina lunged, slamming down the telephone’s switch hook and silencing the dial tone. “What are you doing?”
Manny retreated. “Damn, Rini. Have you gone psycho? He’s hurt and I’m calling 9-1-1.”
She held out her bloodstained hand. “That’s what the Aspero wants you to do. That way they can find us.”
Manny scratched his fingers through his short hair. Damn. He’d been right. Rini was a kind of bait. And he’d taken it. He rolled his head. Well, he couldn’t undo it. And he didn’t want to. They’d just have to find a way to get through this. Together.
“So what do you want me to do?” He tightened his grip on the phone as he looked at her. Holy shit! Puntas had done that to her? Blood smeared Irina’s face and matted her light brown hair. The left side of her face was swollen such that he couldn’t see her hazel eye.
“Nothing?” He couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t bear the weight of one more ghost. Shaking his head, he backed away from her. “Stash will die if we don’t get him help. Is that what you want?
Her bottom lip trembled for a moment. Tears leaked from her eyes. “I think he’s already dead, Manny.”
He looked down so fast the motion jerked on the base of his skull. Dead? He focused on Stash’s chest. One. Two.
Seven.
Come on. Rise and fall.
Ten.
Sixteen.
Twenty.
Nothing. Even the bubbling had stopped.
“When we were making our way to your carport, he made this funny gurgling noise then he collapsed. I dragged him the rest of the way.” Irina ran her fingers down Manny’s arm before easing the receiver from his grasp. “I checked for his pulse while I waited for you to open the door.”
Sixty-two. Sixty-three. Could a person go that long without breathing and still be alive? Swimmers could, couldn’t they? He could still be alive. But how to tell? A pulse. He nodded and inched closer to the bed. He’d take Stash’s pulse, but how? His hand hovered over Stash’s wrist before moving up to his neck. Manny’s hand shook. He could do this. He could… Rini’s words penetrated his pep talk. “When did you learn how to take a pulse?”
If she’d learned from watching TV then maybe Stash wasn’t dead.
“CPR class for my babysitting certificate.” She wiped her nose on her torn sleeve, smearing blood on the blue cloth.
His shoulders sagged. She would know; she’d always been smart. He pinched the corner of the comforter and flicked it over Stash. “I don’t know if I can dig a deep enough hole to bury him, Rini.”
She tucked the comforter around his bare feet and smoothed it over his legs. “I don’t expect you to bury him.”
“We can’t have his body in the house.” Manny glanced up at the ceiling. The niños didn’t need to see any more dead people.
“You don’t understand.” Holding her ribs, she gently lowered herself to the bed beside Stash’s body. “We can’t stay here.”
Head in his hands, Manny leaned against the wall. Leave his house. Impossible. There was nowhere to go. His relatives were dead or in other states, if they were even still alive. There was no car, no money for bus fare. There wasn’t even food beyond tonight. “We can’t—”
“We have to.” Wincing, she rocked slowly on the bed before pounding her fist against her head. “I was so stupid. Stupid.”
Manny grabbed her hand before she hit herself again. Bits of brown flaked off as he ran his thumb over the dried blood. “Where were you to go?”
“Anywhere but here.” She stared at him from her good eye. “Don’t you see? The Aspero find a family, kill all but one or two of them and then they follow the injured survivors to the next occupied house.”
His insides folded into a hard knot. And she had led them here, with a trail of Stash’s blood to mark the way. Hot and cold flashed through him in turn. Like he done at Adobe Mountain, he boxed up the rage and fear. “It’ll be okay. I was planning on leaving here anyway.”
He’d just thought he’d go alone and return with supplies.
“Basia thought you’d already gone. She’d seen you making maps after people refused to move closer together like you suggested. I know she said a rosary for you.”
“I wouldn’t have left without telling her.” But he hadn’t bothered to check on her, not even when she didn’t show for the food drops. Maybe if he had…
Irina set her hand over his and squeezed. “Seeing you in the alley was like a miracle.”
Some miracle. He resisted the urge to sink onto the carpet and will himself to disappear. Sighing, he untangled his fingers from hers. “Why don’t you get cleaned up? I don’t want you scaring the niños.”
She plucked at her tee shirt before skimming her hand along her swollen jaw. “Guess I look pretty scary, huh?”
“Nothing a bath wouldn’t help,” he lied. “There should be a clean towel in the bathroom. As for clothes…”
She was so thin; she could probably fit in Lucia’s things.
Irina shrugged. “I’ll find something.”
Trudging out of the bedroom, Manny dug the papers out of his hoodie’s pocket. He’d used the printouts from Google maps to track the Redaction in his neighborhood then to plan his scavenging runs. Pages of boxes on curving black top, each street numbered or named.
Now, he’d use them to find an empty house to live in.
The gated community seemed the safest bet. Those gringos had money and were white, so the soldiers would listen to them. And as a bonus, he wouldn’t have to travel that far to steal supplies. He ran his hand over the red exes and the blue boxes—red for redaction, blue for deserted.
Hopefully by the time, he got the niños out of the attic, fed them and prepared for the trip, he’d have thought of a way to get past the soldiers’ guns and their tanks.
Chapter Eleven
Sunnie hooked her finger around the side of the honeycomb blind and peered into the front yard. Her breath fogged the double-paned windows. On the street beyond the low branches of a swaying mesquite tree, the Humvee coasted forward. With its bank of lights off, it moved through the cul-de-sac like a shark in dark water.
One soldier hadn’t been too bad; he hadn’t shooed her to her room or said a word when he found her eavesdropping around the hall corner. But the other… Blindly, she reached for her drink, hoping that sugary soda would wet her dry mouth. Her knuckles hit the metal frame of her desk before her fingers skimmed the glass top. Moisture clung to her skin as she wrapped her hand around the cup.
The other had been a complete douche bag—bossing Aunt Mavis around and threatening her. Sunnie’s heart drummed inside her chest. But her aunt hadn’t backed down. Not one little bit. Go, Aunt Mavis! She’d even called the Surgeon General.
Her aunt knew the Surgeon General.
Sunnie smiled. Wait until she told the peeps on line. They wouldn’t discount what she posted. EVER!
The Humvee’s lights switched on, spot
lighting first the Swartz’s house, and then the Lee’s, before bouncing off the Peterson’s onto the street. The owners were gone now. God only knew if the Petersons had survived the Redaction when they’d joined their family in Minnesota. The ‘for sale’ sign in their yard creaked as it swung back and forth. Sunnie caught the straw in her lips and sucked the soda into her mouth.
The Swartz’s and Lee’s houses had been emptied one body at a time—college-age children first, then the teenagers, and last were the parents. At least, Aunt Mavis had removed the orange biohazard tape and kept the yard clean. She maintained the landscaping for all six houses in the cul-de-sac. She claimed it deterred the thieves and looters by making the place looked lived in.
Sunnie slid her drink onto her desk. The yard work wouldn’t fool anyone. The houses reeked of emptiness and death.
The military vehicle turned the corner and the taillight’s red glow faded. Darkness prowled the neighborhood. Sunnie released the blind and it sprang back into place. Shuffling forward, she reached her desk and opened her laptop. The screen blinked, before it burped the Redaction In Action bulletin board.
Pixilated skeletons walked from crudely drawn houses to collapse in heaps on the curb. Every once in a while, one would turn to their former residence and beckon the other inhabitants to join him.
They usually did.
Sunnie scanned the topic headings and the last response. No surprise there. Everyone talked about their first day out and about. She would have too if the soldiers hadn’t told her aunt that the Redaction was back. She opened the file and scanned the subheadings before clicking on the thread titled: Did This Happen to Anyone?
chesshire8: I escaped my crib 2day. Met my ppl F2F, or wots left alive, at JDs. Sum1 sneezed, and the place cleared out.
MLKWIT: STBY! Did you leave 2
chesshire8: F* yeah. RDXON ain’t getting me. LOL.
catsin99: NYers are stronger. Guy coughed and no1 noticed.
MLKWIT: GAL catsin99. NYers ain’t braver, they’re TSTL.
TSTL. That’s harsh. No one wants to think they’re too stupid to live. Sunnie scrolled through the responses on the page. One in three people reported sneezing or coughing. One in three. Her legs shook and she collapsed onto her padded office chair. How many of them could already be infected? Metal creaked as it adjusted to her weight.
Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I) Page 9
