by D. J. Molles
He looked back toward the open door to the lunchroom. After that moment he would never be able to recall the sound of the grenade detonating or the feel of the concussion in his chest. What he did remember, always poignantly, was the sight of a lunchroom chair rocketing out of that open door in a plume of white dust and smacking him in the face.
The next few moments were foggy.
His vision went from bursts of colorful sparklers and fireworks to a grainy whiteout, like overexposed film. He could hear gunshots very clearly, and Miller screaming at him to get up. He tried to tell Miller that he was okay but all that came out was an unintelligible groan. He rolled onto his side, feeling the warm, gritty cement against his head. He spit and watched red streamers splatter the pavement and a little white object skitter across the ground.
My tooth?
More gunshots.
More of Miller yelling at him.
Lee got up on his hands and knees and stuck out his tongue, watching bloody saliva dribble down. Unable to speak clearly, he exclaimed, “Mah fuckin’ toof!”
He was suddenly standing upright and Miller pushed him toward the door to the main church building. His vision cleared a bit, and along with it, his nerves. His lips felt stiff and tight and swollen, and pain began to beat through his entire jaw. He probed his teeth with his tongue and found the gap where his right canine used to be.
They reached the church door and found it locked.
It was a commercial-grade door: solid wood with a steel frame.
Oh, if I only had time to rig a charge…
But he didn’t.
Behind him, Harper and Miller were still firing, faster now.
The fog dissipated enough for him to realize they were stuck.
He jammed the muzzle of his rifle into the door where the latch caught the frame and fired three times. The wood splintered and the door popped open slightly. Lee put a shoulder to it and stumbled through with just enough time for Harper and Miller to squeeze in and slam the door behind them.
Something hit the door on the other side.
“Gimme something to brace it!” Harper yelled.
Miller began frantically searching for something. Lee looked at the floor and saw the same slick linoleum as in the hallway of the school. Nothing they found would gain enough traction to effectively brace the door.
Lee lent his own body weight to the door, slamming his back up against it and feeling his stitches complain. “How many were coming after us?”
Harper breathed heavily. “Maybe five.”
The pounding on the other side of the door became louder, more insistent.
Lee adopted a wide stance and wedged his right foot hard up against the door. “Get back.”
Harper hesitated but pulled himself off the door.
The pressure on his foot doubled without Harper’s weight against the door. The infected on the other side pressed in with extraordinary strength so that the door cleared the jamb about half an inch and their screeching became louder. Urgently, Lee swapped out magazines, slamming in a fresh one, feeling that click as the latch caught the magazine firmly in the well. Holding the rifle at his hip, he fired off twenty rounds through the door.
He didn’t wait to assess the damage, but turned and began running again.
They made their way through the vestibule and into the sanctuary.
Harper’s endurance was beginning to flag. His breathing was coming in ragged gasps.
The sanctuary was as wide as it was long, with tall frosted glass windows along the sides and rows of empty pews, church hymnals and envelopes for tithing neatly tucked in the backs. The walls were painted a crisp white, the wooden trim and pews a warm brown. The carpets and upholstery were a deep burgundy, faded in the center of the aisles from the thousands of feet that had walked it during altar calls. In the front of the sanctuary was a stage, slightly raised from the rest of the floor, and the choir loft above that. In the middle of that stage stood a wooden podium of the same stain as the pews. An ornate flower arrangement adorned the front of the podium, but the blooms had long since lost their color, the leaves had dried, and the brown petals had curled in on themselves, as dead as can be.
“There.” Lee pointed to a pair of double doors to the right of the stage over which a darkened exit sign hung. Lee started running for it. “I don’t think there are any survivors here. We need to get back to the truck.”
As he ran, he pulled his shoulder and arm free of one of the straps on his pack, swinging it around so it hung at his side. He dove his hand into the front pocket and snagged the radio there. Approaching the door, he angled his body and hit the thing with his left shoulder. The door had give, but it only went in about a half foot before something blocked it.
Lee took a step back, clutching the radio in one hand, rifle in the other. He swore and reared back, sending a boot into the door. It gave a little more, but whatever was blocking the door was heavy.
“It’s barricaded!” Miller shouted, because someone always had to say something obvious.
“No shit, motherfucker!” Harper joined in with Lee by getting a running start and slamming all of his weight into the door. Whatever was on the other side shoved out of the way just enough for Harper to hold the door open about a foot. “Miller! Squeeze through and get that barricade out of the way!”
Miller clearly didn’t like squeezing through a door into an unknown room, but he didn’t argue, though his face set into an expression of fearful determination. He clearly knew he still had a teenager’s skinny torso, made even leaner by starvation; he was the obvious choice for such a mission.
He squirmed through the opening just enough to take a look at what was on the other side. His whole body stiffened. “Oh, shit. Oh shit, man.”
Lee put a firm hand on his shoulder, ready to yank him back through if need be. “What? What is it?”
“No, it’s fine.” Miller loosened and edged through the opening, disappearing briefly around the door. There was the sound of some large piece of wooden furniture scraping across smooth concrete and a moment later, Miller reappeared, looking a little pale. He opened the door wide enough for them to get in.
Lee immediately felt the humid air, felt the wind eking in from outside.
He and Harper stepped through and immediately their noses curled. The double doors opened into a small entryway. To the left was a door that appeared to go behind the stage, probably to a baptismal pool, and another door to the right led outside. The door to the outside was open, the wind from the storm pinning it as far back as it would go. The rain battered and splashed the entryway but had yet to fully wash away the thick, caked-on bloodstains that smeared the door and the inside of the room. The blood smears thinned, and then in a dark corner of this dank room, they exploded across the walls. Slumped in that dark corner was something barely recognizable as human, though Lee knew that’s what it was. His deduction was based on the pieces of anatomy that remained distinguishable: a foot, an ear, part of an arm.
“Holy shit.” Harper seemed suddenly even more out of breath.
Lee noticed the barricade had been a damaged pew, perhaps kept back in this little room until it could be repaired. This poor dumb bastard had probably barricaded himself in this room from something in the sanctuary, and eventually something got in through the outer door.
Staring at the remains for a moment more, Lee had to admit that a lot of the man seemed to be missing. “They’re definitely feeding on people now.” Lee covered his mouth. The initial, visual shock was beginning to wear off and allowing his other senses to have their say. The smell in the room was very close to the overpowering smell of the infected. Where the infected smelled more like rank, unwashed body odor, this room smelled more of rancid meat. Where the two smells were similar was the heavy fecal smell, because the infected shit themselves, and so did the dead and dying.
But that’s not something they tell you in the movies.
Real death is not graceful. It is not romant
ic. It is not a gentle sigh of breath as you float above yourself. It is bitter, and it is wretched. It smells of bowels and blood; it sounds like the strange, terrified noises of a wounded animal; and it tastes like vomit rising in the back of your throat. And here in Smithfield, it was inexorable and ever-present.
Lee covered his nose and mouth with one hand and croaked, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Back through those barricaded doors, deep in the church, something crashed around and screamed for them.
Lee posted in the bloody doorway and scanned the outside. The drone of the rain made everything seem still and silent, but Lee knew better. He knew what threats that misting rain held. He tried to listen beyond the constant splash, tried to hear if…
He craned his neck.
Lee faced an unknown street, just a two-lane blacktop that passed between the church and a square, brick building with a storefront that announced it as AMY’S’S ANTIQUES. To his right, the unknown street made a T intersection with Fourth Street. The church took up the southern corner of that intersection, and Amy’s Antiques took the northern corner.
He could hear the driving rain on the street, on the buildings, on the metal roof of the church, pouring out of drain spouts, creating that static sound, like the dead space between radio stations. But underneath that was a higher-pitched noise, steady and constant: sssssssssssssssssshhhh…
“Someone’s coming,” he said, just as the sound of an engine shifting gears rose above the rain. Coming from Fourth Street, a red Chevy Lumina hurtled around the corner of Julie’s Antiques, fishtailing slightly on the rainy street. The headlights were off, but the windshield wipers beat frantically from side to side.
As the vehicle recovered from its fishtail, the engine roared and the vehicle began surging forward again. Lee strained to see who was in the driver’s seat, but he could only see a dark shape through the rain-splashed windshield.
Before Lee could rein him in, Miller was out the door, waving his arms over his head. Lee’s hand shot out with a quickness that surprised even himself and seized the kid by the back of his shirt collar, hauling him roughly back in the door, but the damage was done.
The Chevy Lumina’s wet brakes stuttered and squealed and the vehicle came to a halt. Lee was about to raise his rifle, ready for the shooting to start, when the driver’s door popped open and a man wearing bloodstained ACU trousers and a tactical vest came halfway out of the car. Across the twenty-or-so yards between them, their eyes locked, both bodies tense, each one evaluating the other.
A howl rose above the rain.
The man in the ACUs snapped his head to the left, looking down Fourth Street to the front of the church. His eyes fixed on something out of Lee’s view. They maintained that cold, calculating stare, but his lips split, showing his teeth like a growling dog.
Then he looked back at Lee. “Get in the fuckin’ car, man!”
There was no discussion, no consensus to be reached. All three of them burst through the door and began sprinting for the Chevy Lumina. The man in the ACUs sat quickly back in his driver’s seat. Harper and Miller grabbed the back doors and snatched them open, piling inside, dripping and out of breath. Lee jumped into the front passenger’s seat and the vehicle rolled forward before his boots even left the ground.
For a moment, everyone was silent, feeling the reassuring rumble of that engine carrying them away from danger. There was much breathing hard and fogging up windows and looking around at each other with curious half smiles that faded quickly. Yes, they were all happy to be alive and whole. But now they found themselves in another precarious situation: Who was this man with the ACUs? And was he friend or foe?
The vehicle made a hard right-hand turn onto a four-lane boulevard. The street sign sped by too fast for Lee to catch the name. The engine surged and the vehicle thrummed up to sixty miles per hour, then leveled off. The road straightened out and seemed to go on for a bit, and Lee caught the man in the ACUs hazarding a glance in Lee’s direction.
He watched the man’s eyes go immediately to the little square patch in the center of Lee’s vest that held two vertical black bars. Likewise, Lee’s own eyes were drawn to a similar patch on the other man’s chest that bore triple chevrons. His name tape read LAROUCHE.
Then they were looking at each other’s weapons. Lee held his M4, barrel down. The stranger had a Beretta M9 strapped into a drop-leg holster. It did not escape him that the man’s right hand lay tensely against the sidearm. He looked ready to draw at any second.
The man named LaRouche turned his eyes back to the road. “We’re not going to have to shoot each other, are we?”
Lee shook his head. “Who are you?”
“Introductions in a minute,” LaRouche said. “What are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“What branch of the military?”
Lee pointed to his uniform. “Army, same as you.”
The other man smirked. “I’m real impressed that you recognize the uniform, but that doesn’t prove shit except you watch the news. You don’t look like Army.”
“It’s a long story,” Lee said enigmatically. “Let’s just say I’m SF for now.”
LaRouche nodded slowly. “Wow… an elitist attitude and secret squirrel talk.” He smirked. “Maybe you really are SF.”
Lee raised his brow and shrugged. “You can believe whatever you want.”
LaRouche eyed him. “Moving on. Who are you?”
“Captain Lee Harden.”
LaRouche pointed to his name tape. “It’s said Luh-roosh.”
Harper leaned forward from the backseat. “Excuse me. Where are we going?”
“Johnston Memorial Hospital.” The sergeant slowed down and took a right turn. “We got a wing of the hospital secure. Army cordoned off the area to keep the infected out. They’ve since abandoned the place, but it’s still a decent location, and we can get in and out safely.”
“So there are people here?” Miller asked.
“Well, I’m here.” LaRouche sighed.
Lee turned to him. “How many survivors?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because it’s my job. How many?”
LaRouche considered him for a moment. Lee was not above attempting to pull rank on LaRouche if necessary, but that was a tricky card to play. Here they were, witnessing the collapse of the government, and all command and control had been stripped away. There were no consequences for insubordination, unless Lee wanted to duke it out with him, and he didn’t. Lee didn’t think it was his rank that finally persuaded LaRouche to shrug it off and start talking, but something in LaRouche’s own mind clicked and his demeanor softened.
“One other soldier, besides myself; a Johnston County sheriff’s deputy; and thirty-two civilians.” LaRouche’s right hand didn’t hover so closely to his Beretta anymore. His eyes constantly scanned as he drove, but he seemed less concerned with Lee and his two companions now. “The other soldier’s a private; he’s wounded and not gonna make it much longer. The deputy—Shumate’s his name—he’s kind of in charge but don’t really know what he’s doing. And the civilians are all about as clueless and panicky as you’d expect.”
Lee remembered his radio. “We might be able to help each other out, Sergeant.”
“Oh?” LaRouche sounded doubtful.
Lee nodded. “I have some medical supplies and a doctor. We left them in a pickup on the south side of town, just across the barricades.”
LaRouche still looked guarded. “Are you in contact with him?”
Lee nodded and keyed the radio that he still held in his hand, waiting a few beats before speaking. He forwent typical radio protocol, because Doc probably wouldn’t know what to do. “Harden to Doc—you there?”
He released the button.
Static on the other end for a brief second, then silence.
They all waited.
LaRouche drove the Chevy Lumina quickly through another set of turns, then straightened out. Up ahead and
to their left, a big building loomed. Signs on the side of the road pointed arrows toward it and bore a blue square with a white H. Other signs teetered in the rain, their bases kept down by sandbags. These signs were labeled with that strange circular biohazard symbol and read, QUARANTINED AREA: BSL 4, and beneath that, LEVEL 4 PROTECTION REQUIRED.
A checkpoint stood up ahead. The red-and-white-striped crossing arms were tipped over, some of them broken. The white, tent-like decontamination domes were tattered and bullet-riddled and wavered weakly in the sharp winds, as though they might fly apart at any second.
Lee keyed the radio a second time, speaking very slowly and clearly: “Harden to Doc or Josh. Harden to Doc or Josh. Answer the radio. Do you copy me?”
Static, and then nothing.
LaRouche steered the sedan around the decontamination tents, between two fences strung thick with concertina wire and backed by more cement barricades. When they were around the checkpoint, he steered the sedan through a hole in the barricades and zoomed up to a parking garage entrance, then drove it up to the highest level. From there, Lee looked out over the hospital parking lot and the vast line of barriers that had been erected around it. In one far corner, he could see stacks of what looked like long black plastic bags. They were thrown haphazardly in an enormous pile. Backed up to this pile was a large flatbed truck.
Body disposal.
His stomach felt heavy, pulled down by a lead weight. Perhaps from this high vantage point, the radio signal might get better reception…
“Doc. Josh. This is Captain Harden. Can you copy anything I’m saying?”
Static, and then silence.
Miller swore quietly. “Something’s wrong.”
CHAPTER 14
Doc
Fear and urgency forced Doc to press harder on the gas pedal than was prudent in the rain. It came in white sheets that battered the windshield with too much force and volume for the wipers to handle. Perhaps if he were going slower, he might be able to see, but the speedometer hovered between sixty and seventy miles per hour in the straightaways, dipping below that only for curves or low points in the road that might have standing water and cause him to hydroplane.
