by catt dahman
“Waterproof…but…no...Why?”
“One ball can help you start a fire in bad conditions.”
Julia walked out of the dressing room in her combat gear, all the clothing a size too small, hugging her curves. “Gracias.” She managed to look great. “You got scissors?”
Beth grabbed a pair and handed them over. Julia, without a word, cut her long, glossy, dark ponytail, and tossed it to the side. “Now, can you cut it short right fast? I don’t want one of them grabbing my hair.”
Beth cut the beautiful hair down to short spikes all over, in kind of a buzz-cut. Amazingly, the harsh and bare style highlighted Julia’s angular face, sharp cheekbones, strong, square jaw, and strong nose, while juxtaposing it against her soft, big brown eyes and lush lips. Beth felt a quick wave of envy.
“We change with the world; if you don’t adapt; you get left behind, yes?” Julia smiled grimly. “Dinosaurs didn’t adapt; we’ll do better.”
Despite any jealousy of Julia’s good looks and capable attitude, Beth liked her immensely.
The rest changed outfits, some immodestly, and then outfitted quickly; they finished loading everything from the store. More supplies from the back room storage filled the two SUVs.
“Hagan, you, Bobby, and Billy, can get them a room for all this and then supervise it being unloaded into the area. We’ll leave these and get two more vehicles,” Len said.
They quickly drove back to the hospital; Len gave orders, and they grabbed new SUVs. The group at the hardware store had filled their trucks. Two of the men, Chauncey and a guy they called, Big Bill, raced down a side street and got their own cars, and while they didn’t hold as much, both were filled with nails, hammers, saws, machetes, buckets, pans, and much more.
“We’re done,” Roy said, drinking from a bottle of water.
“Us, too. Now, we’re gonna do the five minutes in for personal shit and get out,” Len said. “Any of you need to do that?”
Some did. Roy didn’t say anything. Chauncey and Big Bill had gotten their things when they ran for the cars. That left the two trucks to be driven to the hospital. The two men would get rides and drive the trucks back.
“If this goes like the rest of the world, we can’t be running around like this much longer…maybe a day…maybe less.”
“I think it’s all bullshit,” Roy said. “Zombies. That’s stupid.”
“Call ‘em something else, then,” Kim said.
“Zeds.”
Roy glared at Julia. “That’s stupid, too, Taco Bella.”
“Chingada Madre.”
“Spick chick.”
She was lunging before anyone could move; luckily, Len’s reactions were like a cat, and he yanked her off her feet to calm her.
“Knock it off, Roy. We don’t need that on top of all the rest we’ve got going.” Len didn’t know yet if the man was crazy, mean, scared, acting a fool, or a dangerous combination, but for now, Len needed everyone working together. “Get off the racist remarks, and I mean now.”
“Bitch called me a name.”
“Pendejo,” she said.
“Okay, now she called you a name. Before, she made a suggestion. You knock off the nasty remarks, and she’ll stop calling you names,” Len said, staring them both down. They finally nodded.
“You have a bad temper, Julia.” Beth laughed.
“I do when I hear stuff like that; I have no patience with rude people who say racist things and pick on people…bullies.”
“He is a bully.”
The first neighborhood was close. They parked both SUVs and gathered courage; this was a first foray into the chaos the news said was going on, yet it was quiet on the street. “Keep calm; stay together; follow directions, five minutes in and out. I want it by the book.”
“Ummm.” Misty raised her hand like a schoolgirl, baffled by what he had said. “What book?” She was only sixteen with long brown hair and a pretty face with womanly curves. Roy had called her, in his nasty way, ‘trailer trash’, but luckily few had heard. She didn’t like him at all.
Len realized again these were civilians, even if half were in combat gear. He told them that he, Kim, Roy, and Misty, would go into her trailer. That left Julia, Beth, Warren, and Mark to watch all four directions. “And I mean don’t be jacking around. You keep watch.”
Julia saluted, half in jest. The other four would sit in the SUV.
“No noise,” Kim added. He took his place as rear guard, Len as point, Roy second, and Misty third. Kim admired Len’s training as the man quietly said, ‘Clear’, to allow the rest to enter the trailer. An awful smell assaulted them.
Len and Roy moved ahead, clearing each room until they saw the master bedroom where Len walked in. He came back out, closed the door, and tapping his watch, held up five fingers.
Misty knew the smell, and Roy’s behavior indicated that her parents, although not sick at first and encouraging her to donate blood and help out, had, in fact, gotten very ill later.
Red had progressed in the ones who had caught it late, like a whirlwind, doing in hours what it had done in days to others. When one was infected with Red and went into the coma stage, it was all over. Misty had planned to get them and take them back to the hospital with her. She wanted to see them, but then again, she didn’t.
Len held up four fingers. Kim stood in her room while she threw pictures, a few items from her dresser and bathroom, and papers into a pillowcase. Len showed three fingers. She could hardly think. Her parents were dying in the next room, and she had to decide what to take; she smashed underwear into the bag then went back to pile make-up into a bag and into the pillowcase. Len held up one finger. Tears streamed down her face. With time ticking away, she snatched frame photos and shoved them in. Len refused to let her into the room, whispering her parents were about to go through the horrible change.
She was thinking about demanding to stay and care for them, but Kim whispered that they were already gone.
“Move,” Kim said, business-like. She could barely carry the load; it was so heavy, but he had the gun, and she had been warned. She grabbed sneakers as she walked out, hanging the laces around her neck.
In the kitchen, Roy finished loading cans and dried goods into sacks as Len stayed on guard. As a unit, they left the house.
“Everything okay?”
“Quiet.”
“A bunch of sick people and we’re playing military ops? Come on, I could have used help carrying that,” Roy complained.
“Did you see the streets of London on TV? They were chasing people and biting them, eating them,” Beth snapped.
“Not here.”
“You missed the camera people being knocked down and one having an arm torn off in Los Angeles?”
Roy shrugged, “Gangs do that shit.”
“Gangs tear off arms and eat people? Since when?”
“Media lies.” Roy threw the food in the back.
Misty thought again about arguing, but she knew that when they had sent her away, that was good-bye, and she had mourned then. She sniffed back tears. She got into that vehicle, and both moved on to the next stop.
In Beth’s car, Julia was bashing Roy’s stupidity with colorful words that no one could translate. Kim asked them both to calm down.
Misty kept her eyes on Mark who had given her a hug and a kind smile. He was handsome and classy, wasn’t the type she might have dated before. She planned to write in her diary a little about how cute he was.
The next stop was for Roy, and Mark joined the operation, seeing it as further training for his hopes to be a deputy sheriff.
Len made note of Mark’s calm stealth and gave him a pat; he was an eager kid, pretty well countrified, and would have made a fine deputy. So far, this made three he could count on, including Hagan and Kimball. Rita and then Warren got their things. As they filed out, there was a scream in the distance.
“Anything on visual?”
“Nothing, Major,” Julia quipped.
; “I am retired, smart-ass.”
“Sir, yes, Sir.”
Len thought she was a pretty quick study, and despite her smart mouth, she would be a real asset; she was a good girl, had recently moved to the city, and could handle a gun like a pro.
Len’s nerves were jumping.
Kim grabbed his things from an out-of-the-way, seedy motel on the edge of town as Len led them in a big circle. Kim shrugged and reminded them he was a PI now and in town for a case. They heard bumps and distant moans and screams, but saw nothing.
“Did you solve the case?” Beth asked.
“I guess. Both the husband and mistress had caught Red, but he had panicked, and it became a murder-suicide. That’s why I ended up at the hospital, waiting to see if the forensics showed anything unusual.”
“Besides a zed virus?” Julia smirked.
Jeri, an older woman, had left her roommate and the roommate’s two kids feeling fine. Her face drained of color when she saw the door covered with drying blood and a trail to the rooms both in blood and feces, ground into the carpet. Jeri gagged. Pausing, Len followed the blood splatter with his eyes, rifle ready to go. It trailed off into the grass.
“Keep a close watch,” he mouthed to Beth and then saw her whisper to her other three guards. He motioned Beth to come to him and for Warren to stand guard in her place. She wasn’t trained, but she was smart and rational and wouldn’t panic. He whispered for her to remain at the doorway and to watch the street and the open door of the house; to her credit, she didn’t ask how to manage both.
In the bedrooms and bath, the roommate and kids had left brown stains and puddles, vomit all over the floor, and blood trails. It reeked. “Where are they?” Jeri whispered.
Roy looked more concerned. “Maybe they went for help.”
Kim rolled his eyes. “Five minutes. Go.”
Jeri gathered her things with a minute to spare, saying she wanted out of there. As she slid into her seat, the roommate, two kids, and two more bloody people rounded the side of the house next door, saw them, and moaned loudly.
Beth saw them first, moving her body to aim her gun. Mark and Kim were seconds behind her. Len calculated. Several houses away, five torn bodies moved in their direction. “Hold fire. Warren, you and Julia watch behind us.”
“I don’t know how to shoot,” Warren said.
“Hells bells.” Misty ran from the car and took the Sig from him, pushed him towards the car, and told them, “My Daddy took me to the range a few times.”
Thank, God, we’re in Texas, Len thought.
“Beth and Mark, hold fire. Kim, me, Roy…one, two, three, pick a target and put them down if they don’t stop. You need to stop right there,” Len called. He fired a warning shot into the air.
One child was missing an arm and most of his face, while the other had slimy, grey, intestines leaking from his partially eaten stomach. The mother had gotten sick, turned, and attacked her own children. Beth leaned over to vomit. No one blamed her; they all had wanted to heave.
“Hold.” Len placed a shot into the mother. She didn’t react to the wound. He took out her leg, and she struggled to get back to her feet, stumbling on the mangled limb.
“Acquire target. Go.” Kim hit the child mid-section, Len hit the mother in the head, and Roy used two shots to drop a man. The other man kept coming, as did the man Roy had shot twice, and the child shambled along, again.
“My God,” Mark muttered.
“Are they zombies…dead people?”
“Dunno. Acquire and go again,” Len ordered, “head shots.” The walkers were close now, and Kim, Len, and Roy, all got headshots easily.
“Len,” Beth warned, her finger ready to pull the trigger. She watched the five approaching. Many would have turned and run after seeing their cloudy eyes and knowing they wanted nothing more than to eat.
“Julia? Sitrep?”
“Nothing moving here.”
Len leaned closer to Beth, saying, “Exhale, and gently pull the trigger. Keep it on your target. Go.”
Beth almost closed her eyes and fired, hitting the man three out of four times. Body shots. She mentally kicked herself.
Len finished him with a shot to the head, motioning Roy and Kim to hit one each. Two kept coming, bodies torn to shreds with bite marks, clothing tattered, just like in one of the movies Len had seen. But these bled. Not a lot, but some, and he thought it might be true that they were just barely alive, a few functions still working in order to keep them going so the virus could spread.
Mark calmly sighted in, quickly dropped an obese woman with a headshot, and then turned and took out a black man who still gripped a hammer in one fist.
“Load up. Let’s move,” Len ordered. He spoke calmly, but he was as shaken as the rest.
Roy scowled, mumbling beneath his breath. Beth felt sick. She tried to say something, but Len again gave the same order.
She did as he asked, with a “Sir, yes, Major,” flipping from her mouth as she got in the SUV. She had a case of Julia’s smart mouth. Nausea abating, she knew she would think about this and talk of it later, analyzing her feelings and maybe getting sick again, but right now, she felt strangely like part of a team, no, a machine that should be run a specific way. This calmed her.
“Damned fine job,” Len said in his vehicle. Kim and Mark said the same in theirs.
“Can you teach me to shoot like that, Mark?” Beth asked.
“Me too, Chica.”
“Sure.” Mark was flattered; they didn’t know how sick he felt after killing two people.
Len knew they wanted to run back to the safety of the hospital, but the god-damned virus had changed things, and whether he wanted it or not, he was leading a rag-tag group of civvies whom he needed trained for this, yesterday. It felt hopeless until he had seen them in action, responding calmly.
Later, they would feel shock and despair probably; he’d have to counsel the ones who did the shooting. So far, half were acting like good soldiers in-training. Maybe more could rise up. Roy would have to be watched.
Tom and Ben, after seeing all of this, didn’t want anything from their homes, but Len drove there, the other SUV following, so his team could gather things for both of the men. Part of him wanted to make the men go in, but these were just regular, scared people. He did it himself to encourage the team. Underwear, pictures, personal items, all went quickly into pillowcases, and they were out fast, both times.
Beth got her things, the operation was going smoothly although she was jumpy as more screams echoed down the street. She came out with her pillowcase full. “It’s as if they all left.” She motioned to the trails of bloody footprints.
“Maybe third stage,” Len said.
“But where are they all going? Where are they? And why?” Julia fumed.
“No idea, but let’s get this finished.” They drove, not seeing but a few shambling around. They were Reds, heading for someplace only they knew. No one could tell if they had turned yet or not.
“Last stop,” Len said. “Let’s get this finished; then, we can go.” They were in the final neighborhood.
Each took a place, the routine sinking in, as Len, Kim, and Roy, walked with Julia Perez.
5
Hospital
Hagan helped Billy and Bobby and a few more volunteers as they unloaded the firearms, ammunition, and anything else related from the vehicles. The clothing and survival gear went into another room.
Another group loaded the already-full pantries with food from the grocery store; they had enough canned and dried food to feed all of them for weeks, but the fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, and fresh meat would be missed. From the cafeteria and grocery store, they had picked up huge cans of all kinds of vegetables, soups, rice and pasta, sauces, canned meat, fruit, nuts, and boxes of instant breakfast foods and potatoes, along with junk food such as, chips, sodas and juice, and sports drinks.
Hagan had spent the last few hours with his time neatly divided; every week there were fo
rty hours working, five hours commuting, five hours getting ready, fifty-six hours sleeping, two hours attending church, and twenty hours working out. Anything left might be for something fun. A year ago, he was spending almost all of his time, except for the forty-five hours needed for work, with his sick mother.
Red was a bad disease, but the cancer and treatments Hagan’s mother endured were every bit as bad. She became a thin, shrieking, raging woman who cried piteously with the pain, vomiting helplessly from chemotherapy, and unable to eat because her mouth and throat were filled with blisters. She had been a nanny to three rich, white children, grown now, who were like brothers and a sister to Hagan; they had cried bitterly and as hard as he had at her funeral.
Now, he was security in the hospital where his mother had died, and for the first time, he understood why she had passed years before; so he would have time to learn to be a guard and to sculpt his body, making it strong and healthy, and then being here to get work. Hagan believed in God, and he figured that it was true that God had purposes and big plans; each person was a small dot on the wheel of that grand plan. Each had to do what was planned for him.
Hagan gathered a group and asked them to bring bed mattresses and linens. For some reason, he felt they should store the resources and sleep close to the generator in the basement where the cafeteria and many other rooms were located. Maybe from others such as Len, they wouldn’t understand that Hagan thought his feeling was a whisper from God; they might not even believe in God, but Hagan was sure it was the right thing to do.
Hagan asked Sally if her nurses could help move more supplies which might be needed. Few doctors and patients were left, and Hagan thought the rest of the medical staff was at the relief station, sick.
Sally sighed, “I heard from them a while ago…maybe it was hours…”
“Are they sick?”
Sally nodded. “Yeah. They couldn’t even get back here; no one is left tending the sick but a few nurses and doctors who are immune.”
