Omega Pathogen: Despair

by J. G. Hicks Jr

  Jim heard low voices once again and saw movement from inside the bed of the truck, as silhouettes passed in front of small gaps in the metal box covering the truck bed. The man standing sentry looked down into the opening where he stood and spoke to those inside. Jim made out the words, ‘It’s clear.’

  Through the rear door of the truck’s makeshift armored enclosure stepped the woman. With only the slight mound of the new grave shielding him, Jim pressed the side of his face into the dirt to try and be as small as possible.

  The woman carried a roll of toilet paper under her left arm and a revolver in her right hand. She quietly closed the rear door and walked to an oak tree surrounded by brush just near the rear of the driver side of the pickup.

  Jim didn’t see any night vision optics worn or carried by the woman. He guessed they only had the one pair, since she periodically would shine the red-lensed flashlight as a guide in her short walk toward the tree. Jim considered using his AR-15 but even with the suppressor it would be heard clearly by those inside the pickup.

  The woman stopped and shined her light at the man atop the truck. “Is it still clear?” she asked in a loud, slurred attempt at a whisper.

  Jim cringed; although she seemed to know she should be quiet, the alcohol and drugs she was now under the influence of kept her from controlling her volume.

  The man on the roof looked in her direction with his night vision. “Yeah. Be quiet and hurry up and piss,” the man answered and turned his attention back toward the MRAP.

  Jim determined now was as good a time as he may get. The three were probably as separated as far from each other as they would be that night.

  He rose from the ground and with his AR-15 aimed at the woman he made his way toward her. While he closed the distance, she appeared to look around, but didn’t turn on her flashlight. She couldn’t see him in the blackness. She bent down and set her revolver and the roll of toilet paper on the ground.

  Jim angled his approach to stay behind her. He heard the sound of her zipper as she pulled it down. He continued to approach, he was less than six feet away when she grabbed the waistband of her jeans on each side and prepared to lower her pants. Jim moved his rifle so it hung on its harness on his left. He removed the knife from its sheath on his right thigh and closed the remaining distance.

  As the woman began to bend in an effort to lower her pants, Jim reached around with his left hand, brought it up and struck her in the chin with the heel of his hand. Immediately after the blow landed, he closed his palm around her mouth and her nose to try to prevent any cries for help.

  The force of the blow to her chin caused immediate pain in her jaw and a spontaneous reaction to cry out. Vanessa tried but was unable to take in air, because a hand was now clasped over her mouth and nose. The pain of the initial hit gave way to the fear and panic of not being able to breathe. She tasted her blood as it filled her mouth. Vanessa scratched and clawed at her attacker's hand but it brought her no air.

  Jim held his grip tightly with his left hand and pulled the woman against his body to maintain control and get an easier kill strike with his knife. The woman continued to claw and scratch at his hand and arm as he placed the tip of the six-inch blade to the right side of her neck, where the skull ends and the cervical spine begins.

  Jim felt the blade penetrate her skin and scrape past bone as he pushed in the knife and angled the blade upward and severed her spine. The woman ceased movement and became limp. He pulled out the blade and felt her warm blood flow onto his chest as he slowly dragged her body behind the oak tree. He wiped the woman’s blood from his knife onto her shirt and sheathed it.

  As Jim stood upright from the body, he heard the man’s voice from the top of the truck whisper, “Vanessa.” Jim looked around the shrubs and the oak tree and saw the man looking directly at him through his handheld night vision device.

  Simultaneously, the man bent down and grabbed the rifle that had lay at his feet while Jim found the pistol grip of his AR-15 and was bringing it up at the man on the roof.

  The man on top of the truck was already at a disadvantage; his rifle was further away at his feet and he could only use one hand as the other held the night vision optics so he could see Jim. Jim’s rifle had been at his side. Jim aimed and fired three shots as the man was in the process of awkwardly trying to put his rifle’s buttstock against his shoulder. The man dropped onto to his back on the roof with the upper part of his body hanging over the driver's side. Gravity took over and the man’s body slid off the side onto the ground.

  Jim heard movement from inside the steel box, not sure where the giant man may try to exit, he alternated his aim between the upper hatch and the back door of the truck bed.

  Jim heard the familiar deep guttural growl of the infected. From around the passenger side of the pickup two infected came into view. At the same instant the rear door of the truck flung open and struck the infected male closest to the truck. The thick steel door struck it in the forehead with enough force that it sent the infected flying backward four feet and it landed on its back.

  The other infected, a female, now focused on the giant man as he leaped out from the bed of the truck with a large pistol in his right hand and a flashlight in the left. The infected woman didn’t hesitate and lunged at the huge man before he could take a step, and clung to him.

  Jim aimed his rifle to fire at both the infected woman and the huge man as they fought. As he prepared to fire, he heard more growling and sounds of footfalls closing in. He swung around just in time to see three infected almost within arm's distance of him. Jim fired; killing the three infected, and scanned the area for more.

  Jim turned to reacquire aim on the man and infected woman but they had moved behind the truck out of sight. He could hear the sounds of the big man and the infected fighting from the passenger side of the truck. He heard the large man cursing and growling, just like the infected.

  Jim continued to rapidly scan around in three hundred and sixty degrees. He looked for any infected that approached, and an opportunity to take a shot at the giant man if it presented. When he spun around back toward the red pickup truck, he just caught enough of a glimpse to start to dodge the huge fist swinging at him.

  Jim was struck so hard that he was thrown off his feet towards his right and landed hard on the ground. The NVGs were knocked off his face. Immediately after he hit the ground, the giant man was on top of him, the weight of the man sitting on his waist and lower abdomen was immense.

  Jim instinctually lowered his chin toward his chest to try and prevent his trachea from being crushed as he felt the man’s massive hands reach around his neck. Jim realized at the same time that he was lying on top of his rifle. It was now useless. He wouldn’t be able to move the large man off of him to get to it.

  He could feel it; he was close to losing consciousness. Jim knew he didn’t have much longer before he’d be robbed of air or blood supply to his brain and would pass out. Or he’d just have his neck snapped by the gigantic man.

  Jim tried, but couldn’t reach the knife on his right thigh; it was covered by his attacker's tree-trunk leg. Jim grabbed the knife off his left waistband. The man's height prevented Jim from striking him in the throat, so he thrust the knife twice into the man’s right lower ribcage.

  With each thrust the blade penetrated skin and muscle and scraped ribs as it passed into his lung. The man flinched, his grip loosened as he moaned and cried out in anger. Then his grip on Jim’s neck grew strong again.

  Jim stabbed twice more and then sliced across the man’s right upper leg near his groin to try and sever the man’s femoral artery. Jim could feel the strength waning in the man’s grip after he’d struck him in the chest, and even more so as he felt the man’s blood spilling onto him and soaking his abdomen from the large laceration to his groin.

  Jim could hear the wet gasps of air from the man as he tried to breathe with his right lung collapsed, the space now filled with blood. Jim passed the knife to his
right hand, careful not to let it slip away due to the blood that covered it. Jim struck again at the man’s chest to damage his left lung, and then sliced again at the man’s groin to cut the left femoral artery. The man fell limp on top of Jim and everything went black.

  Jim woke and gasped for breath under the man’s bulk. Although he was no longer having his neck crushed, he couldn’t take full breaths because of the weight of the lifeless body on top of him. Jim heard the sounds for a few seconds before his fogged mind registered what they were. They were sounds of infected growling close by.

  He struggled to free himself of the dead man and reach his AR-15, but couldn’t. Jim heard the sound of a rapidly approaching vehicle. With the glare of the headlights he saw at least five infected close by. The infected changed their course and focused on the oncoming vehicle instead of Jim.

  The vehicle screeched to a stop. Jim heard the sounds of suppressed pistol fire along with the sound of Royce calling out his name.

  “I’m here,” Jim strained the words out from his painful throat and heavy chest. Within a minute or two Royce had reached his side and started to pull the dead man off. Jim tried to help and pushed as hard he could, but he felt like his efforts did little.

  Once Jim was freed from the huge corpse that had crushed him to the ground, Royce helped Jim to his feet and steadied him by holding his arm. “Are you okay?” Royce asked.

  “Yeah. Good to go,” Jim replied. Royce let go of Jim to take a two-handed aim with the pistol and shot an infected man that was running at them. Jim saw the NVGs on the ground and bent to pick them up. His head and then body followed his hand to the ground.

  Royce pulled Jim back off the ground and toward the red pickup’s enclosed bed. Jim swayed and stumbled as Royce pulled him along. Jim held his grip on the NVGs and struggled to get his rifle up to help defend them. He fired four shots at three infected that had gotten close to them, but missed. Royce shot the infected and pushed Jim into the bed of the truck and followed.

  Royce slammed the heavy steel door closed and latched the bar to lock it. Jim was lying on the bed of the truck, still trying to catch his breath and reaching for his head. Jim felt it odd that he found it difficult to find his head with his own hand. Royce looked around the inside of the truck bed and noticed the open roof hatch. He stood, slammed it shut and then locked it.

  “Thanks, Royce,” Jim said in a slurred voice as he squinted and widened his eyes to try and focus on Royce’s form. He was finally able to connect his hand to his bleeding head and tried to slow the blood. A battery-powered Coleman lantern that had illuminated the back of the truck had begun to grow dim. His hearing seemed as though he was wearing earmuffs. His field of view began to shrink and blackness took its place. He thought he heard Royce call his name but sound was so distant it was hard to tell. His narrowed vision failed completely and was replaced by total blackness.

  Chapter 5

  Jim covered the woman’s mouth and nose to deprive her of air and to keep her from crying out to alert the others. He stabbed her through the right side of her neck to cut her spine and put an end to the struggle.

  He felt remorse in his dream or nightmare. Should he have closed in and offered them the chance to surrender? Why didn’t he do that? He knew the answer; he knew why he didn’t do that.

  He began to feel. He felt intense pain in his head; his brain ached. He started to feel pain in his neck and then throughout his body. The headache was the worst of it. He opened his eyes, or right eye; vertigo began immediately to take hold and he closed his good eye again. He heard Royce say his name several times, each time sounding more distant than before until it faded to nothing.

  Jim next felt the sunlight through his closed eye. Even through his eyelid, the pain from the sun was burning through to the back of his brain. Was he infected? Had he been bitten? Was this what it felt like to be taken by the SCAR virus and be turned mad? Or was this a concussion, a traumatic brain injury? It felt similar to what he’d experienced after an IED had blown up his vehicle in Iraq.

  His mind registered feeling wet and cold for some indeterminable amount of time, then warm and dry. He heard someone yelling nearby but couldn’t make out the words; he couldn’t tell if they were directing the shouting at him or someone else. The voice sounded like someone he should know.

  He regained consciousness suddenly. At least he knew that he was now aware of his surroundings. He awakened in a state of fear and panic. He rose to a seated position from the bed of the pickup truck and was immediately reminded of his head injury. Reflexively he reached for the left side of his head. He felt the bandages around his head and his left eye.

  “How do you feel?” he heard Royce ask.

  He turned his head to the left, where the voice came from, and felt pain in his neck, and then nausea with it. He saw Royce squatting on his left side and looking into his good eye. “I feel like shit. Thank you, Royce,” Jim answered.

  Jim saw daylight seeping through the gaps in the steel. “Help me up, please,” he asked. Royce voiced opposition, but helped Jim to his feet when he continued to try to get up on his own.

  “While you’ve been sleeping your ass off, I’ve been busy,” Royce said with a grin. Royce told Jim that while he had been unconscious, he’d dressed his wounds, though Jim had figured that out. Royce had removed Jim's blood-soaked clothes, cleaned him off and put on fresh clothes.

  Royce reassured him that he hadn’t seen signs of bites while he had taken care of him. Royce said he had talked to Jim’s family in the MRAP, after he convinced them he was helping Jim and not trying to shoot him. He’d also taken his truck to the ranger station and brought back the semi-tractor tow truck. Royce had just finished checking the airboat to make sure it was operational when Jim had come to.

  Jim learned from Royce that the former owners of the truck also had two large propane cylinders in the floorboard of the truck with a long hose and nozzle, a homemade flamethrower. Memories of charred pavement and shattered glass in the parking lot where the MRAP had been went through his mind.

  Jim looked at his watch but, after taking a second or two to focus his good right eye, he noticed the watch was shattered. Jim fumbled around getting his watch off and tossed it aside. “What time is it?” Jim asked.

  “It’s quarter after nine,” Royce answered as he stepped out of the bed of the truck and onto the ground.

  Jim followed; he reached up and touched the ceiling of the steel box to guide his unsteady walk. Royce helped him down from the truck bed to the ground and then over to the airboat that was now off the trailer and on the dirt beside the road.

  Jim looked around at the bodies nearby and noticed the legs lying on the ground behind the oak tree. It was the woman whose body he’d dragged there after killing her last night. He saw the gigantic man that had nearly killed him. He wasn’t sure yet, but the fight might have blinded him in his left eye. Around the large man was dark, almost black dried blood that Jim had bled from him. He saw the man he shot off the roof of the truck. All three of the bodies had been a meal for the infected that had gathered around after he and Royce had made it safely inside. There were the bodies of the infected that he and Royce had killed also littering the area.

  “Jim, can I ask you something?” Royce asked.

  “Yeah, Royce,” Jim said and looked up at him sitting in the airboat’s operator chair.

  “Why didn’t we just corner these assholes and try to get them to surrender? We didn’t have a lot of ammo but we may have forced them to quit and walk away,” Royce said.

  Jim looked around at the bodies and then out at the MRAP in the distance stuck in the mud. He thought of his wounded brother that had been shot in the back by one of the now dead group, “I don’t know that they would have walked away, Royce. And I did it for revenge,” Jim answered and stepped into the airboat.

  Royce watched Jim look at the coil of large diameter cable in the boat. “I’ll be going slow out to the MRAP, you’ll need to pay out t
hat towing cable as we go,” he said.

  Jim nodded. “Is this going to be strong enough?” he asked. Royce shrugged. “It should be, they use it for pulling fully-loaded tractor trailers.”

  Royce handed Jim a pair of noise-reducing earmuffs and pointed to a pair of thick leather gloves at Jim’s feet. As soon as Jim had donned the ear protection, Royce started the engine. After about a minute of letting the airboat engine idle, Royce fed it more throttle and they slid forward on the dirt toward the wet marsh and mud where the MRAP sat.

  Jim watched the distance between the airboat and his family shrink as they slowly approached. As Royce had instructed, Jim let out coils of the thick cable as they moved over a mixture of dry earth, marsh, and mud. The rear double doors of the MRAP were open. He could see his children Chris, Jeremy, Berk, and Kayra gathered at the rear doors. He searched for Arzu but couldn’t find her. Then he saw his wife up in the turret, her hand covering her mouth as she shook her head.

  Jim found it required more exertion than it should have when he waved to his family. They returned the gesture. They all looked exhausted. Even from a distance, Jim noticed the expressions of sadness through their smiles as they greeted him. Although he had no doubt they had been under tremendous stress, something restrained their expressions of joy.

  Everyone covered their ears to protect against the noise from the airboat. Jim looked for the tow hooks on the rear bumper of the MRAP and found they were buried in the mud. He realized he hadn’t thought of bringing a shovel. He then spotted two on the deck of the boat near the bow. Royce had thought to bring some.