Snareville

by David Youngquist

“About what?” Pepper asked from behind us. She took the paper towel from the blonde girl and wiped at the corner of her bottom lip. “You missed a spot. Blood low?”

  “Yeah. Danny and I talked last night when we couldn’t sleep.”

  “She’s feelin’ guilty for not stopping things," I muttered. "And I’m missing Jenny.”

  “Don’t feel guilty. It happened so fast, none of us were prepared. You did what you could. We all did. And we all miss her.” She gave Cindy a brief hug and a little smile. The rest of us got our breakfast.

  During the meal, it was decided I needed to get back to the Farm. My troops needed me there. It had been two weeks since we lost Jenny, and I needed to take command again. It was time for me to relieve Bill, so he could come home for a week.

  My Humvee was fueled, loaded, and ready in no time flat. I packed my bags. Arguments fell on deaf ears. Pepper wanted me out doing what I do best. It sounded like a comic book cliché, but I was better in the field than I was in the garden. Pepper and Ella could take care of the babies. Sandy and Heather were there to help. The area was secure. Trade had begun to flow between the little towns. The investigation into Rick’s little coup had turned up another half-dozen people, who now idled away their hours in the county slam on the south end of Princeton. Everything was in order.

  “Something else, Danny,” Pepper said as we picked a few late green beans.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re going to be a daddy again. I want you out there helping to find a cure for this virus before this next child comes around.”

  I looked up at her, mouth wide open.

  “Don’t look so surprised. It’s not like we haven’t been trying.” Tears streamed from her eyes.

  I wrapped her up in my arms. I don’t remember much else about the morning, but after lunch, Cindy and I were packed for the trip west.

  “A baby?” Cindy marveled from the seat beside me. “Congrats! You need to change your name from Danny Death.”

  “So I’ve been told,” I said.

  We were just past Atkinson, rolling down State Route Six. I wanted to check the trade routes and stay off I-80. At an empty farm near the outskirts of Geneseo, I stopped the truck.

  “You’re getting a shooting lesson today.”

  Cindy gaped as I pulled Jenny’s rifle from the back seat. We stepped out of the rig. I showed her how to hold the rifle, how to sight it, where to hold. We picked out a board on the side of a barn. A piece of window trim painted white stood in stark contrast to the red walls. Cindy's first three shots missed. The next one clipped the edge of the board. Her next centered. The rest of her magazine shattered the wood.

  I slid another magazine into the well, but I didn’t charge the gun. We rolled into town.

  The cattle trucks full of Zeds had to have gone somewhere. My bet was Geneseo, chasing scavengers. We rolled past the farm store, then past the grocery store. Both had been looted months ago. An empty bank full of scattered papers came up next. We turned right at a dead stoplight and rolled into the older section of town. Beautiful Victorian homes lined the streets. Maple trees showed tinges of yellow and red in their leaves. I crept along, looking through the firing port for any sign of Zeds.

  It didn’t take long. Cindy glanced down a side street on her side of the truck and grabbed my arm. Without a word, she pointed. I followed her finger. Around a church two blocks down, a large pack of deaders milled. I backed the rig up a couple feet, turned, and eased down the street. With the diesel in low idle, the Zeds ignored us. They concentrated on getting through the door. At a hundred yards, I parked diagonal in the street. I could feel a wicked grin pull at my face.

  “Drop the window and shoot from inside. We don’t want to get out yet.”

  Cindy looked at me. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I got that Pig mounted up top for a reason.”

  “Oh.” She shifted in her seat, rifle pointed out the window toward the mob.

  One thing I did do to modify my Humvee was to strip a stereo system out of an abandoned Porsche and mount it in my rig.

  “How about a little mood music?”

  I slid a disc into the slot, cranked the volume, and climbed behind the M-60. In a carnal bellow, Kid Rock’s voice swept out and crashed down on the silent neighborhood. That got some attention.

  A few of the Zeds at the back of the pack turned, just in time for the tracers from my gun to catch them in the face. With a shout, I held down the trigger. Three bursts ripped into the crowd. I could hear Cindy’s single shots punctuating mine. Bodies flew to pieces. Heads exploded. A skull cap tore loose and ricocheted off the white wall of the church. A jaw disintegrated. Figures spun in drunken pirouettes. It was a beautiful ballet of bullets and gore.

  Some of the dumber Zeds turned and came our way. They must have been really hungry to walk into that lead storm. I laid off the trigger of the Pig for a second to drop into the rig. In the back seat, I had an M-79 grenade launcher stashed. Yeah, Tom had a lot of cool toys loitering in mothballs up at the Arsenal. The single-shot beast ate the same fodder as Jinks’ M-203—just a useful round altogether.

  With a crazy-assed grin, I climbed back through the spider hole and dumped a shot into the group of deaders. The explosion ripped two in half and sent more spinning across the lawn. I sent three more rounds downrange. Black mist sprayed the walls and door of the church. Zeds disintegrated. The pack turned and shuffled away. We sent a few more rounds after them to let them know they weren’t welcome back. One last grenade from the blooper tube blew the doors off the church.

  “If they were smart, they weren't standing right behind that door,” I mentioned as I climbed behind the wheel.

  I pointed the Humvee down the street, and we plowed over corpses while Kid Rock demanded to know who was going to give him some sugar. The tires eased through black slush. I stopped in front of the splintered church door.

  “Come with me,” I said as I stepped out. I could still feel that wild grin on my face.

  Cindy snapped her head around at me. She wore the same feral smile. We both climbed the steps. I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, grabbing the back of her head. She blinked at me for a moment, not understanding until I pulled her to me and kissed her. Hard.

  She squirmed for a second, then opened her mouth and returned my tongue. Little muffled whimpers came from the back of her throat as we devoured one another.

  She yanked back suddenly. “No, Danny no! I’m contagious, and—”

  “I’m immune,” I said. “Inoculated in the spring.”

  Cindy stared at me, starry-eyed, then we stepped inside the building.

  I fired a pistol shot into the ceiling. The shell casing bounced off an oak pew to rattle along the floor. Plaster fell on us in a light shower.

  “Hello?” I shouted into the gloom. “God’s not home right now, but if you leave a message, He’ll ignore you later!”

  No reply. But Zeds didn’t try to claw in through a wooden door for no reason. There had to be fresh meat in here somewhere.

  “They’re back there, Danny. Big ones and little ones. Up by the alter.”

  I looked at Cindy, a question on my face. She tapped the side of her face, next to her eyes, and I remembered. Thermal.

  “You can come out!" I shouted toward the main part of the church. "Deaders're gone.”

  “You’re not.”

  The voice came from the front left of the room. As I picked my way down the aisle, I had to step over empty cans of hash, sardines, and other detritus. They must have made a run to the store.

  “You’re right. But I’m not gonna eat you.” I stepped past another pew.

  “Oh, but I will,” Cindy said.

  I grinned at her. “You’re not helping.”

  She laughed. I heard a whimper from the front of the church.

  I reached the end of the pews. “Last chance. Stand up, or we ventilate this place.”

  From behind the last row, two gr
ubby kids stood up. A boy and a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. The girl looked no more than twelve, and her brother—he had to be her brother—looked maybe a year older at the most. Behind them on the floor, a scattering of six toddlers stared at me. Both of the older kids carried SKS rifles.

  “You it?” I asked. They nodded mutely. Cindy looked around the dark room and nodded as well. “Where're your grownups?”

  “Gone,” the boy said. “Went to find help. Three days ago.”

  “They your parents?” I couldn’t imagine leaving my kids to fend off a pack of Zeds.

  “No, our parents are dead,” the girl said. “Just some people who took us in.”

  “And they left you here?”

  The boy nodded. One of the toddlers grabbed his pants-leg to hide from the new people. The kid must have been wearing the same diaper for a week. The smell wafted off the kids: shit, urine, unwashed bodies. The whole place stank of it. Mix in the sardines, and my stomach started to churn.

  “We can’t leave ‘em here, Danny.”

  “I've got an idea.”

  I went out to the rig and turned down the stereo. Cindy followed. The upper half of a Zed crawled toward me. She put a round through its skull, and it laid still. With a radio call, I got in touch with the traders down in Atkinson. I told them what was going on. They told me they'd take the kids in, if I could meet them at the farm store on Route Six in twenty minutes.

  I took the rifles from the kids. They didn't protest. I flipped the catch on the magazine release on the boy’s rifle, and four shells fell out in my hand. I cleared the action, and another round flipped out. The girl’s gun was empty.

  “Mine’s broke,” she said.

  “What did you think you were going to do with five rounds?” I asked.

  The boy shrugged. Five rounds. Six kids. I could guess.

  Chills rolled down my spine.

  “Get in the truck.” I said as I opened the door.

  We loaded the kids into the Humvee. We had nothing for them to eat. They’d been licking out the bottoms of cans for a day. Some of them brought their blankets. Some brought little stuffed critters. Quite a bunch rode with us to the other side of town.

  Elizabeth, the girl, informed us they were at church last year when the Zeds hit town. Their parents and the other kids' folks turned to the church for a safe place. Then they turned Zed, a little at a time. She and her brother hadn’t seen ther parents alive since before winter. The two of them took care of the little ones. The scavengers who came in during spring treated them pretty bad, but they kept the kids fed. Until three days ago.

  At the farm store, we waited quietly. It didn’t take long for a squad of pickups to roll into the lot. With few words, we handed the kids over to the traders. They would have a secure home. The kids didn’t look back as they trotted to the trucks. Jake, the leader of the Atkinson group, shook my hand and thanked me for finding the little ones.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “God does work in mysterious ways. We haven’t seen any kids in six months.” He smiled, turned, and walked to his truck. He slid an arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders. Not like someone who planned to use her, but like a father would comfort his daughter.

  I climbed back into the Humvee. Cindy was rocking back and forth in her seat.

  “My-fault, my-fault, my-fault,” she was jabbering.

  “What’s your fault?” I asked as I dropped the rig into gear.

  She swept her hand out in a huge arc. “All. Everything’s my fault. My fault.”

  I looked at her as we hit the road. “How's it your fault? You didn’t have a choice. Johnson damn near killed you, from what Tess told me.”

  She gibbered on unintelligibly for another fifteen minutes or so, then paused for a deep, ragged breath. The silence left me alone with my thoughts.

  God does work in mysterious ways.

  Those kids hadn't been far from ending up Zed chow. What were the odds of someone coming along looking for some payback? What were the odds of us driving by on this particular day and having us some target practice? What were the odds?

  “I don’t remember my last kiss,” Cindy said in a small voice. “It must've been before Johnson took me. I don’t remember. Thank you."

  I looked at her for a moment. She stared out the front window as we rolled down I-80. The road was clear now. The scavengers were hiding out somewhere since their plans for us fell through last time.

  “You’re welcome?” I said. I didn't know what else to give her.

  “It sounds strange, Danny, but I was like those kids back there. I was church raised. I was saving myself. I thought God abandoned me so many times. Now I realize He was there all the time. He just had different plans for me.”

  “I can’t see much of a plan in this, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  “I’m sorry I get so wound up sometimes. Johnson cooked my brains. She made me dumb. I used to get nervous, but I knew how to handle it. I can’t handle it much now. When I’m hungry, I’m worse.”

  “We’ll get up to the Farm and get you something.”

  “The real thing. Good stuff. That’s what I need.”

  We drove on. Another twenty miles into the trip, the radio crackled to life. O’Shea was on the line. He'd called Snareville first, got the frequency for my rig, and told me to put my foot in it. He'd had some kind of a breakthrough in the research and needed both of us there as soon as we could make it.

  "I’ll be there in twenty minutes," I said.

  I rolled through Andalusia, then down along River Road, and pulled into the drive of the Farm. One of the Marines saluted as he appeared from a small stand of bushes, opened the gate, and let me in. I slid the electronic key of a dead security guard through the slot, pulled in, and parked. Cindy followed me into the hall. At the door, Lieutenant Gibson waited for us.

  “Something up, Lieutenant? I asked.

  “O’Shea wanted me to bring you down here as soon as you got in.”

  I followed down the hall for the dorms. We walked past the prisoners, who were getting softer and fish-belly pale. We needed to do something about them. Tess, O’Shea, and the new guy—Doctor Penmachan—stood in front of the window where we'd been keeping Johnson.

  “What’s goin’ on?” I asked.

  “She’s dead,” O’Shea said.

  “No kidding," I said. "Has been for better'n a year.”

  Cindy leaned against me, shivering. She hated this area of the complex more than any other.

  “No, I mean, she’s really dead. The corpse is totally inanimate. Our formula works. We sprayed five cc’s into her face last time we slid her a pint of blood through the feeding slot."

  I pressed my face to the glass. Johnson lay in a pile in the center of the room. Not a finger twitched. Her one eye stared at the ceiling. Since we'd taken over here, the blood bags we gave her once a week kept her moving. Now: not a spark.

  “You sure she’s dead?”

  “As sure as we can get without going in there,” Tess said.

  Cindy opened the door and scurried into Johnson's room. I tried to call her back. She just turned and grinned at me. Faintly, I heard her call to Johnson. She got no response, so she gave the corpse a nudge with her toe. Again, nothing. Johnson’s head lolled around on a limp neck.

  “Okay, Cindy. She’s dead. Get outta there."

  Cindy turned. She had that wild grin on her face again. “Dead! Bitch is dead! Serves her right!”

  She kicked the body like a soccer player sending the ball to the other end of the field. The corpse skidded across the tile. Cindy chased after it and kicked it again. This time, it stopped hard at the end of its chain, so Cindy stomped its skull. Her wild laughter turned to sobs as she stopped, plastered her hands over her face, and bawled.

  I punched in the code for the door, went in after her, and gently pulled her away. Tess took over outside. She guided Cindy to the locker room showers. O’Shea led Gibson, Penmachan, and me into the small
meeting room.

  “The Ebola Zaire kills you," O'Shea explained, numbering the items on his fingers. "It has a ninety to one hundred percent fatality rate. The Z-virus re-animates the dead tissue.”

  I nodded. I knew that much already.

  “The synthetic is rather simple," O'Shea continued. "It does its work on dead tissue, but it needs fresh, red blood cells to function. Thus, the hunger for live tissue. They will starve or decompose, given time.”

  “Fine,” Gibson said. “But who wants to wait that long? Especially when we’re the food supply.”

  “Exactly," O'Shea said. "That’s why we’ve been working on a way to eliminate the Z-virus. Once that virus is eradicated from the system, the corpse dies.”

  “Great terror weapon,” Tess added as she joined us. Cindy huddled up close against me, showered and changed into a clean set of clothes. “Johnson was arrogant enough to think she could control the outbreak. Didn’t work. Now all the money her sponsors paid her is worthless. Great karma.”

  “So what’s the next step?” I asked.

  “Well, right now, we have three young ladies here to cure, if they want it,” O’Shea said. “I don’t know how it will react in you. It'll kill the virus, but it might well kill the host as well. I won’t force you girls, but you need to know the risks before you decide.”

  Cindy rolled up her short sleeve. “Better dead than keep living a half life.”

  O’Shea went to her with a syringe already prepared. “You’re a brave girl. I thank you.”

  “You kiddin'? I’m scared shitless.”

  Tess left the room to get Crystal. O’Shea slid the needle into Cindy’s arm.

  “You’ll probably feel a bit sick. You might want to lie down after this.” He depressed the plunger. The liquid flowed into her arm. Cindy wobbled almost at once.

  “I’m gonna go find a bunk. Don’t wait up.”

  “Cindy, wait, I’ll—” I started to stand.

  “No. Go do something else, Danny. Check on the troops. Better idea… go get some information from those guys in the holding room.”

  She slipped through the door and turned down the hall.

  “I’ll go sit with her,” Penmachan said. “Bring the other two down to the sleeping room when you’re done.”