Jesus, Noah thought before finding Natalie’s gaze on him. “We have to go check on them,” she said.
“Maybe we should make camp around here and work our way past them tomorrow after the sun comes up.”
But Natalie said, “Noah, that was a young couple. What if…?”
He caught her eye and shook his head. But Chloe asked, “What? What if what?”
“They might have a baby or young child in that car,” Natalie answered.
“Oh. Jeez. Let’s go.” It was Chloe and Jake hoisting their heavy packs on their backs that decided it. Noah disagreed, but he’d proven his decision making suspect. As they descended the hill, he said to Natalie, “We can’t take a baby with us, Nat.”
Chloe replied. “Are you gonna put the little thing out of its misery, or leave it in its car seat till it dies? And it’s not an it, you know. It’s a little he or a little she.”
“How the hell could we take care of a baby?” Noah rebutted. “You know how much noise they make. Plus baby food. Diapers. We can’t take that on.”
When they reached the highway, they donned disposable gloves and masks. The car’s headlights still shone and the engine groaned. It was in gear, but stuck on a body pinned under its rear rims. The seatbelt warning binged insistently. “Find cover,” Noah said as they neared the ambush site. “Keep rifles on both ends of that pipe. I’ll check the car out.”
“Be careful,” Natalie said from behind, which annoyed Noah immensely. They shouldn’t even be doing this. The interior and exterior lights of the car lit a scene littered with carnage. The driver lay still amid a tangle of bodies. His one remaining eye stared unblinking at the sky. One of his attackers, however, was still breathing. Noah’s aim followed the rising and falling chest up his bloody torso, past his bloody neck, to his still intact head. Bam! Bits of his cranium skittered across the pavement. The pile fell still.
He went around to the other side of the car. An Infected leapt out at him. He fired while backpedaling but missed. Three shots rang out. The attacker bounced off the car’s trunk before sliding to the pavement and face planting on asphalt. Noah put an insurance round into the back of the woman’s head, then took a deep and steadying breath. On the far side of the car lay the other victim of the Infected ambush. Three attackers lay dead around her, all men. One already had his trousers lowered. Noah gritted his teeth in anger before putting bullets into those three Infecteds even though none showed any signs of life.
He crept closer. A young Asian woman whose blouse had been torn open had been cut up badly by the knife used to free her from her seatbelt. Deep slashes oozed from her face, neck, shoulders, and abdomen. Frothy orange blood bubbled slowly at the ragged puncture wound in her throat. She made an inhuman noise with the last air to pass her windpipe. God, please forgive me, he prayed before shooting her.
Noah’s head began to spin. A prickly feeling spread across his chest and arms. He wanted to sit, to curl up and wrap himself in a tight embrace guaranteed to ward off the impending shakes.
But instead, he slowly, and with dread, raised his flashlight to search the car. It held supplies, but no car seat. “It’s empty,” he informed his family in a voice that fluttered and shook, but he heaved a huge sigh of relief. He would not have to face the dilemma he feared of finding a baby in back. And his family had survived an ambush into which he would have led them had Chloe not been as paranoid as she was. Noah turned the car and its headlights off. With Jake covering him, he confirmed that the Infecteds he had shot beside the road were all dead and the pipe from which they had emerged was empty. They grabbed two gallons of water from the car to replace what they’d consumed and hurried past the awful scene.
When they reached the little girl’s body, their daughter left the highway. “Chloe!” Noah called out.
She kicked the little girl with her boot, ready to fire, then turned her over and thumped her eye with the flick of her finger. The girl didn’t flinch. “Little bitch!” she cursed at the corpse as she kicked her again and threw her Latex gloves atop the small corpse.
An hour later, they set up camp and ate in sullen silence until Chloe asked, “Did you let that car go by to see if it was an ambush?”
“No!” Noah replied. “Jesus, Chloe.”
It was hard to tell in the darkness and ensuing silence whether she believed him.
Chapter 5
THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY
Infection Date 65, 1315 GMT (9:15 a.m. Local)
Emma thought that the first day’s work assignments went well. Samantha had prepared all the work cards and used pushpins to affix them to the cork bulletin board next to the few Rules, which hadn’t changed overnight.
“Don’t lose the pins,” Samantha called out to the crowd in her high-pitched voice.
An Uninfected retrieved one that had fallen when he pulled the three by five card off the board. On the card, as on all the others, Sam had printed in her cheery red handwriting, various day jobs and a few more permanent positions.
“I think the Uninfecteds appreciate the smiley face,” Samantha suggested to Emma. She stepped forward and took a card from an elderly woman, pinning it back to the board. “That job requires too much physical labor.” The masked octogenarian now waited on the twelve-year-old. “You could take that job. All you have to do is identify the bodies before burning. Check them for driver’s licenses and stuff. Or you could do that one down at the bottom. Cleaning up after meals in the dorm and washing the dishes.”
The woman, strangely expressionless for an Uninfected, selected the latter card. “Thank you, dear.”
Upon returning, Samantha said to Emma, “She seems nice. But I can never tell what they’re thinking.”
“They’re always thinking something,” Emma cautioned.
When the last of the Uninfecteds had selected a job and cleared away, it was the Infecteds’ turn. There were some minor scuffles. Two Infecteds tugged on the same job card. Samantha again admonished them about the pushpins, speaking to the Infecteds more harshly, Emma noted, than she had to the old uninfected woman. One infected man stepped on the toe of another, who threw an elbow into his ribs. The two men had to be pushed apart by Dwayne, who shouted, “Hey!” and drew his pistol.
“Don’t lose those pins!” Samantha added.
One of the men said, “Why do the Uninfecteds get first choice?”
“Because you’re contaminating this area with Pandoravirus,” Emma replied.
“So. That’s their problem.”
Dwayne aimed his pistol straight at the man’s face and looked at Emma, who shook her head. He let the complaining man live.
But Samantha was writing something in her blue spiral notebook. “Mr. O’Keefe complains a lot,” Emma read over the girl’s shoulder.
When the town square had cleared and everyone had presumably headed off to work at their assigned jobs for the day, Emma convened a meeting in Sheriff Walcott’s office with her roommates from the NIH hospital—Dwayne and Samantha—but excluding the relatively incompetent Dorothy Adams, a housewife who had been touring the Great Wall when the virus rampaged across China. “We should have someone in here representing the Uninfecteds,” Emma suggested. “Any candidates come to mind?” No one had any names to propose. “Be on the lookout for anyone who seems to be an organizer type. I’d rather them be in here talking to us than out there talking to the Uninfecteds.”
Dwayne and Walcott stared back at her blankly. Samantha wrote Emma’s order in her notebook and said, “I’ll find someone.”
“So, Dwayne, how did it go down at the county road junction last night?”
“Fine. They were all infected, and they’d collected a good amount of food and weapons by ambushing passersby. We lost two. They lost eleven. Five more are in the jail cells in back. Do you want me to kill them?”
Emma said, “No. I’ll talk to them first.”
“And still kill them all when they come out?” Walcott asked. “No second chances?”
“No second chances. Our credibility is at stake. But you can take prisoners. You can use them as hostages at the next house.”
“It’s so crazy,” Samantha said, “that Uninfecteds give up just because we’re executing strangers. Weird. What do we do if the holdouts are Infected? They won’t care that we’re throwing contaminated body parts at them or executing hostages.”
“Those you may have to burn out.” Emma tasked Samantha with checking on how the assigned work was progressing. “You won’t scare the Uninfecteds. You’re too young. But if you see anyone slacking off, or any Uninfecteds that seem to be organizing a resistance, write down their names and we’ll take care of them later. Try smiling. The Uninfecteds will let their guard down. Practice.” Samantha opened her mouth and bared her teeth. “Keep practicing. Use a mirror.”
“Dwayne,” Emma said, “I hear the Uninfecteds are organizing defenses down in Rawley Springs. When will we be ready to move on them?”
“We’re down to twenty-two guns we can count on. Sheriff Walcott may turn up some more today, but unless you let me start recruiting among the Uninfecteds we’ll have to use up most of those twenty-two in any fight with Rawley Springs.”
“When will you be ready to go if you do plan on using them all up?”
“As early as tonight. We’ll at least whittle down the numbers in Rawley Springs for a next try in a few days once we’ve built our forces back up.”
“And you trust your people will die for you?”
“No,” Dwayne responded. “It’s very different than leading Marines. Infecteds will run away if they see what’s coming as certain death. But they all caught the virus and turned in the last week or so and are still pretty addled.”
“Not very deep thinkers, eh?” Samantha tried out her latest version of a smile.
“Try keeping your eyes open,” Emma advised. Samantha rubbed her jaw to loosen it.
Emma dismissed them and headed to the back of the sheriff’s offices. Four men and one woman stared out through bars at Emma with fully popped and black pupils. “We’re organizing a community to provide for its members’ needs.”
“What’s the catch?” asked a middle aged man.
“You have to follow The Community’s Rules.”
“And what happens if we don’t?” persisted the stubble faced man.
“You’ll be punished. Executed.”
“Who makes up these Rules?”
The talkative man must have been the group’s leader. None of the others seemed the least bit curious. “I do.”
Off to the side, unnoticed at first by Emma, a young man in his twenties leapt to his feet and, seething with adrenaline, lunged for the bars and grabbed for her with claw like hands at full extension. “Aaaaarrh!” he screamed, grimacing, tainted spittle spraying from his mouth, fingernails just inches from an unflinching Emma.
She turned to Walcott’s deputy and nodded. His pistol shot rang out, and the Infected man rocked back and then slumped, one arm caught in the bars and preventing him from reaching the concrete floor.
The four other Infecteds didn’t react at all. Three stared at the middle aged man, who in turn held Emma’s unblinking return gaze. “If we agree to join, what do we get?”
She held her hand out to the deputy, who handed Emma his pistol. She raised it, took aim, and shot the man in the forehead. He crumpled dead to the floor. The other three now looked at Emma, not at the dead man. “You get to live,” Emma said in answer to their former leader’s question. “And all your needs will be taken care of.”
The two men and one woman joined, casually stepping over the bodies of their former comrades. Emma radioed Dwayne. “I’ve got three more guns for your force.”
Chapter 6
THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY
Infection Date 66, 1525 GMT (1:25 a.m. Local)
Isabel and Rick surveyed from a distance the carnage spread across the state highway. “Jesus,” Isabel said. “What a bloodbath.”
They left their packs in the roadside ditch and approached the car carefully, M4 carbines at the ready. Several times, Rick halted Isabel, ten meters behind him, with a raised hand when his senses alerted. But after each, they resumed their slow progress until they reached the car, whose flat back tire had rolled to a stop against one of the dead.
The car windows were smashed. An Asian woman, who had been cut out of her still clasped seatbelt, lay dead beside the passenger door.
“Let’s go,” Isabel whispered, though they appeared to be alone.
Rick was kneeling next to one of the dead. “These people must have attacked this car and killed the driver and passenger.”
“But who killed them?” Isabel asked, searching the dark ridges and trees all around.
He drew a large, black, serrated knife from its sheath. Isabel cringed, thinking he was going to conduct some kind of roadside autopsy. But he rolled a body over and pried a flattened and warped bullet from the bloody asphalt beneath where the dead man’s head had lain. Rick held the smushed bullet up to Isabel. “Kill shot to the head. 5.56mm.”
“That’s the same ammo Noah and his family use,” Isabel noted, her hopes rising.
“Whoever it was, they tore these attackers up.”
After retrieving their packs, they proceeded past the massacre. “Look.” Isabel pointed into the ditch ahead. “It’s a little girl.”
Rick knelt beside her corpse. “Two shots in the back.”
“Jeez,” Isabel muttered. If Noah and his family had done this, how much had they changed since she’d last seen them less than two weeks earlier?
* * * *
After the sun had risen on a bright day, they came upon a barricade across the highway right at the city limits of a small town, as delineated by a road sign. Three men with hunting rifles manned the far side. Rick and Isabel approached slowly; Rick with his right hand raised instead of resting on his M4s grip.
“That’s close enough!” shouted one of the men. His rifle rested on his hip and, like the others, eyed them from behind sunglasses. All three wore hats and caps of various sorts. “Town’s closed!”
“I’m Capt. Rick Townsend. This is Dr. Isabel Miller. We’re on official U.S. government business.”
The three sentries held a brief sidebar discussion before the spokesman asked, “What kinda doctor is she?”
“I’m a neuroscience professor!”
“Sorry. Like I said, the town is closed. Head thata way.” He pointed to the road that led off at a right angle. “It rejoins the highway on the other side of town. I wouldn’t bother any landowners along the way. They’re all shoot-first types these days.”
“Has the virus made it down here?” Rick asked.
“Oh yeah. They’s everywhere.”
Isabel said, “Can I show you a picture and ask if you’ve seen some people we’re looking for?” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and approached the barricade.
“Iz!” Rick snapped. He aimed his rifle in the air over the heads of the men at the barricade ahead, whose rifles and shotguns were now aimed at Isabel.
“Take it easy,” she said to the town guards in a plaintive tone. “Jeez.”
“Why ain’t you wearin’ gloves and masks?” questioned one of the men.
“We’re immune. We’ve been vaccinated.”
After a brief, hushed discussion, their origina
l challenger said, “Bullshit! Ain’t nobody around here got any of the vaccine yet.”
“We have. I’m from the White House and he’s from the Pentagon.”
“Right. And I’m the King of…of wherever.”
Isabel tried again. “Have you seen a family—husband with dark curly hair, pretty wife and daughter with short blond haircuts, and a tall and skinny thirteen-year-old boy?”
“And that other kid,” Rick prompted.
“Oh, and a grown boy, but we don’t know what he looks like.”
Again, there was a whispered conversation. “Yeah, we seen ’em. Armed to the teeth, like you.”
Isabel grinned at Rick. “How long ago? Where’d they go?”
The main guy pointed up the hill along the route they’d been directed. “They come walkin’ up yesterday just like you. ’Bout midafternoon, I’d guess.”
“Thank you! And good luck!”
She again grinned at Rick as they detoured around the town.
“Say!” called out the sentry from the behind them. “That vaccine really work?”
“Yes! It does!”
“Tell ’em to send us some ASAP! Every day, somebody else gets sick!”
The road wound into the foothills and was slower going than the flatter highway. Despite Isabel’s dozen major aches, which had merged into continuous pain from her shoulders to the soles of her feet, her pace quickened. They were gaining on Noah. “We’re less than a day behind! And they’re following the map they left for us.”
Isabel couldn’t tell where Rick’s eyes were looking behind his sunglasses, but his rifle was just beneath his chin and its butt rested firmly against his shoulder. She raised her own M4 but saw nothing at which to aim.
“Do you smell that?” Rick asked.
Wood smoke was mixed with a vaguely nauseating smell. Rick led them off the lane and up a scrub covered hillside. A column of gray smoke rose above the forest. Rick dumped his pack and crouched as they neared the crest. Isabel did the same and felt she might escape the bonds of gravity with each lighter, springier step.
Resistance: Pandora, Book 3 Page 4
