As the deaders flailed and crawled brokenly, leaving red skid marks in their wake, the motorcycle cut a half-donut, popped a wheelie, and roared back across the parking lot to where Meg and Jacob watched in awe from the stairs. It screeched to a halt at the foot of the stairs.
The visor on the rider’s black helmet flipped up, and a grin broke across a well-tanned female face. “Need some help?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“She’s got balls,” Sydney said. She’d joined Arjun at the window when he told her zombies were chasing a woman and a boy across the parking lot.
“Wrong equipment,” Arjun said when the rider took off her helmet and shook her short blond hair out of her eyes. She had a Dutch cut hairstyle with dark streaks dyed along the temples. The motorcycle idled with a low grumble as she talked with the woman and boy. The woman held a small bundled figure in her arms.
“You know what I mean.”
“We should’ve helped them ourselves.”
“We wouldn’t have reached them in time. Besides, your Plan A is to sit and wait, remember?”
“Sometimes plans change.” He headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“She has kids.”
“What if there are more zombies in the hall?”
Arjun picked up his skateboard. “Multipurpose defense system.”
“Well, maybe. But what about me?”
“You can wait here. You’ve had too much to drink.” He pulled his helmet from a peg on the wall, as well as knee and elbow pads.
Sydney grabbed the helmet from him and plunked it on top of her head. As she fiddled with the chinstrap, she said, “Look at all those pads.”
“I don’t like pain. And if a deader tries to bite me, he’s going to have to chew through a lot of rubber first.” He slipped on his elbow pads and flexed his arms.
“Wow, you really are good at this zombie thing.”
“We use makeshift armor in games a lot. Players can cut up carpet, wrap themselves in duct tape, and even use pieces of PVC pipe to protect their limbs.” He presented his knee pads to Sydney. “You can borrow these if you’re coming. Try not to get any blood on them.”
“You know what would be cool?” she said. “A Storm Trooper cosplay outfit. I’d like to see a zombie try to gnaw through one of those.”
Arjun was already at the door, listening with one ear pressed against it. “You’d be too slow. A deader would knock you over and crack you open like a boiled egg.”
After a few moments when he heard only the soft idling of the motorcycle, he whispered, “Okay, let me go first.”
He opened the door a few inches and studied the hallway. The deader who’d tripped over the recycling bin was gone, and all else was still. He nodded at Sydney and slipped outside, tucking the skateboard under his arm. Several doors were ajar along the hall and they walked briskly past them without looking inside. One apartment had a radio turned on low, broadcasting what sounded like a news report.
They reached the stairwell at the end of the hall without incident, although now they could hear gunfire from several blocks away. “Whatever happens, let’s not go that way,” Sydney whispered.
“But guns might mean protection,” Arjun said. “Police, military, or an impromptu citizen’s militia.”
“I’d rather take my chances with the deaders.”
“We’re going to need weapons. Real weapons. And not just for zombies, either.”
“Tribal violence? You’re such an optimist.”
They headed downstairs toward the idling motorcycle. Arjun figured the group wouldn’t stick around long, especially not out in the open. They’d just completed the final turn in the stairwell when they saw the woman pointing a pistol at them.
“Chill!” Sydney said. “We’re alive. We’re people.”
The boy was helping load the bundled figure—which Arjun now saw was a young girl—onto the back of the motorcycle, wedged between the driver and the backrest. Arjun at first thought the girl was a deader, but in that case they would be putting a hole in her head. Maybe she was just sick.
Which meant she could turn at any moment.
The woman lowered her pistol and moved to help secure the girl. Arjun and Sydney joined them by the motorcycle after completing a wary scan of the parking lot and street. The woman gave the girl a quick exam, pressing her wrist against the forehead and pulling back the girl’s eyelids. She kissed the girl’s cheek and said something Arjun couldn’t hear over the motorcycle’s engine. The boy tucked a teddy bear against the girl’s waist.
The driver wrapped the edges of the blanket around her waist and tied a secure knot, effectively nesting the little girl in place. “Don’t worry, ma’am,” the driver said to the woman. “I’ll get her there.”
“We’ll catch up as soon as we can.”
The driver pulled on her glossy black helmet and lowered the visor. She wedged the shotgun under one leg and gunned the engine. Arjun couldn’t help admiring the leather boots, pants, and jacket—probably sweaty on the inside but almost impossible to bite through. After a quick good-bye wave, she accelerated across the parking lot toward the street. Tears glistened on the woman’s cheeks.
“You did the smart thing, Mom,” the boy said.
“Is your girl sick?” Arjun asked, and the woman turned as if she’d forgotten anyone else was there.
She nodded, introduced herself and her son Jacob, and explained how they’d been driving to the clinic when they’d gotten stuck in traffic. The motorcycle could go where cars couldn’t, so the motorcyclist—whose name was Hannah—had volunteered to hurry the girl for medical treatment while Meg hunted for another car.
“I know that clinic,” Sydney said. “I went there when I thought I had an STD but it turned out to be a yeast infection.”
“You do know you don’t have to say everything you think, don’t you?” Arjun said.
“It’s not far,” Sydney said, ignoring him. “Ten blocks or so. Near the big fancy church.”
“Yes, I know where it is,” Meg said.
“What’s an STD?” Jacob asked. No one answered. Arjun figured the kid would look it up on the Internet later.
“You can hide in our apartment,” Arjun said. “We’ve got food and power.”
Meg shook her head. “No. My husband’s out here somewhere, too. I’m not stopping until we’re all together again.”
From the determined expression on her face, Arjun believed her. And she did have a handgun. That was better than a skateboard.
Someone called to them from an upstairs window. Arjun squinted against the sun but couldn’t see the speaker. Then Sydney muttered, “Oh shit.”
A group of figures emerged from around the corner, moving like a single, uncoordinated organism. Arjun’s first thought was “More deaders,” but some of them were armed—a couple of rifles, baseball bats, crowbars, and pistols. The crowd was diverse, as if it had been in motion a while and collected people along the way from different neighborhoods. It headed up the street in the direction the motorcycle had gone.
Meg called out to someone on the edge of the group, a black woman carrying a rusty hammer. “Where are you going?”
“That church. Promiseland. It’s being opened as a shelter.”
“They got the army and everything,” said the man behind her.
The group didn’t appear to have a leader, although several teenagers walked the fastest, consulting their cell phones for directions and news. An older couple hurried down the apartment stairs and joined the crowd, apparently deciding Promiseland was a better bet than holing up. Nobody seemed to care that they were breaking curfew.
“What do you think, Mom?” Jacob said to Meg.
“Seems faster than trying to find a car and fighting through traffic. And maybe there’s safety in numbers.” She fixed Arjun and Sydney with a questioning look.
“Well,” Sydney said to Arjun. “Plan B?”
He stepped close enough to whisp
er to her. “The clinic is near there. And one thing I learned from modeling outbreaks, sick people are the most vulnerable. If that kid was infected—”
“You’re already infected,” Meg interrupted, overhearing him. “We all are. I observed the initial cellular changes. I’ve already cycled through my symptoms, or at least the initial exposure. It’s possible the virus—technically, a bacteriophage—will mutate and make another sweep through the survivors. Maybe multiple sweeps, an endless loop of mutations and immunities. Hiding in your apartment won’t keep you safe.”
Arjun considered this. “Yeah, but infections don’t try to eat your flesh.”
“My mom’s a scientist,” Jacob said with protective pride. “She’s going to help figure out how to stop this.”
Arjun didn’t see how she could do that when she couldn’t even protect her own kid. But the crowd was already halfway down the block. Although he considered himself a loner, a recluse who would rather stay up all night and program or play video games, he also understood the game theory behind group survival. Loners tended not to last long because they didn’t have enough resources to tackle all the threats.
Arjun tended to view larger issues through the lens of classic game theory. This was a Cooperation Game, not a Competition Game. Not yet, anyway. That would probably come later.
“Good luck to you,” Meg said, “and thanks for trying to help.”
She took Jacob’s hand and they started after the crowd.
“I’m going, too,” Sydney said. “An army, doctors, food, some authority figures. Seems like the best bet to me.”
A trio of jets roared low over the downtown area, followed seconds later by another thunderous round of explosions. Some in the crowd shrieked and scattered, even though the bombs had dropped a couple of miles away.
“If the military is using air power, then this thing is scaling up,” Arjun said. “They wouldn’t use a bomber against two or three zombies. That would be like taking down a gnat with a shotgun.”
“They won’t be bombing Promiseland if it’s a base,” Sydney said. She took a few steps after the crowd. “You coming?”
Arjun looked down at his skateboard. Despite his fantasies of wielding it like a samurai sword against a pack of drooling deaders, he now felt silly holding it when the real danger was borne in the air and already in his bloodstream. He tossed it aside and joined Sydney.
She took his hand and gave him a bleary grin. “Does this mean we’re going steady?”
“You’re funnier when you’re drunk.”
“Maybe the church will have some beer.”
“That’s the Catholics, and I think that’s wine.”
Arjun looked back at their apartment building. A couple of feverish-looking people came down the stairs, half staggering, half tumbling. A few more had collected at the far end of the street behind them. It looked like the deaders had formed their own crowd.
And the deaders were headed for Promiseland as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Cameron Ingram watched on the security monitors as the red-and-gray city bus pulled in and the East Gate closed behind it.
He couldn’t see the occupants through the tinted windows, but judging from the way soldiers rushed to the side door, some type of struggle was underway.
“That’s why I warned you about civilian refugees,” Ingram said.
“It’s part of the deal,” said Col. Benton Hayes, commander of field operations in the newly established headquarters. “We’re not here as part of your private security team.”
The staff members in the surveillance room fell silent. Ingram rarely visited the room, which was on the top floor adjoining the church’s administrative offices. It afforded a view of downtown Raleigh, which now featured dark, twisted pillars of smoke swirling toward the heavens. Flames flickered and danced in the treetops around the shattered dome of the capitol building. Each moment brought the Biblical description of Armageddon out of the past and into the present.
Not that this square-jawed military man would appreciate the Scripture. No, he served the false idol of government and worshipped the graven image of a flag.
On the monitors, gunfire erupted inside the bus, muzzle flashes acting as a strobe light. Bullets punched through the windows, followed by a spatter of liquid against the glass. Soldiers disembarked the bus, shepherding a well-dressed woman in bare feet whose legs were draped in torn stockings. The final soldier pulled the door closed behind him, wiping blood from his face.
Ingram frowned. The infection had reached his sanctuary. Although Ingram was safe—God had already proven his immunity—he didn’t know which of his staff members were weak of faith. And these soldiers…they’d been trained to kill and their sins ran through them like subterranean rivers.
Still, he needed to protect the church until such time as the Lord made His return.
“I welcomed you here,” Ingram said to the colonel. “I offered Promiseland to your president because this is the hour of trial. This is the test that will determine who is among the elect.”
“We’re facing a contagious outbreak,” Col. Hayes said. “Until we can ascertain the cause, our orders are to terminate with extreme prejudice.”
“The Book of Corinthians tells us that when the trumpet sounds, we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed,” said one of the staffers, a clean-cut man whose necktie was out of place among the uniformed soldiers. Ingram gave him a charitable smile for having recognized the import of the disaster.
“I’m a God-fearing man myself,” the colonel said, removing his camo fatigue cap and running a hand over his bald head. “But I’m sworn to obey orders. And until I’m relieved of command, I’m going to bring civilians onto the church property and protect them from harm.”
“How many of the civilians are infected, though?” Ingram said. “You saw what happened on the bus.”
“Someone on the bus turned into a zombie, and we eliminated the threat,” Col. Hayes said. “We’re checking all refugees for symptoms and establishing a quarantine protocol. Once we mobilize more troops, we can turn the tide on this thing.”
Ingram didn’t like the term “zombie.” To him, the infected were followers of the Beast. Moral weakness had led to their turning and their wicked ways clung to them beyond death. Their hunger for flesh was proof enough, since they sought to devour the righteous.
Hayes triggered his handheld radio and spoke into it, “This is HQ to Charlie Foxtrot Alpha. Status report, over.”
The reply came seconds later. “This is Charlie Foxtrot Alpha. We had a situation here. An injured private showed symptoms during a mission. One of our guys swore the private came back from the dead, over.”
“Stomp out any rumors to that effect. The last thing we need is a panic and everybody shooting each other, over.”
“Copy, over.”
“Some groups of civilians are approaching on foot. Make sure they’re allowed past the gates. Deaders are on their trail, over.”
“Copy, over.”
Hayes signed off and checked the monitors. While many of the two dozen cameras were focused inside the facility, four offered views from each direction at street level. Ingram estimated maybe fifty or sixty people were in the approaching crowds. They were coming to him for salvation, and he would provide it.
Assuming none of them were sick. Assuming none were wolves in sheep’s clothing, agents of Satan.
“You’ve got strong walls, Reverend,” Col. Hayes said. “Nothing can get in here unless we let it.”
“Nothing can get out, either,” Ingram said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“The time has come for judging the dead and rewarding the servants of the Lord. You’re fighting the wrong war.”
Hayes’s wrinkled face creased with intensity. “I saw your footage. The zombie didn’t bite you, for whatever reason. But do you really want to go out beyond these walls and test your faith again?”
Ingram was still pro
cessing what had happened in the studio. “The Lord has burdened me with a mission. I can’t abandon my people in these troubled times.”
Col. Hayes gave a slight wave of dismissal and consulted with a lieutenant. The church staff was busy working computers, chattering on the phone, and organizing provisions to serve the emergency shelter. A FEMA regional director came over to where Ingram sat in a high-backed chair and said helicopters would be dropping food, cots, and medical supplies before nightfall. The gymnasium was large enough to serve as sleeping quarters for several thousand people, and more could shelter in the church sanctuary if necessary.
Ingram protested that proposal, saying the sanctuary should be restricted for use by members of his congregation. Hayes relented but insisted the option would remain on the table.
The military was busy erecting tents and mobile command units in the parking lot. Ingram counted six transport trucks parked along the walls as well as a small fleet of Humvees with machine guns in the roof turrets. This was not Michael’s army of angels come to slay the dragon—it was a collection of the frightened and arrogant. Still, the sight of weapons and regimented authority would provide comfort to those who entered. Once delivered to Promiseland, they would be in Ingram’s care.
One of the staffers came to him after the FEMA director left. Ingram searched the elderly woman’s face for signs of infection and was relieved that she was pure. Even before the trials, his judgment had been sound.
“There’s a woman to see you,” she said. “She claims she represents the governor’s office. Department of Public Safety.”
Ingram had spoken with the president, met personally with a Senator and a Congressional representative, and received the blessing of the National Evangelical Association. Why should he deign to meet with a minor functionary?
“She was the woman on the bus, sir,” the woman added.
Arize (Book 1): Resurrection Page 13
