A pause.
“No, sir. That feature was disabled late last year for security purposes. Someone there should be able to turn it back on.”
Another pause.
“No, sir. I will make every effort but I was never in the area. That will be a difficult situation to assess. I have been out of contact for several days.”
And then.
“Thank you, sir. I will.”
He rang off. “We have a rendezvous near Memphis. It’s going to be difficult if we don’t find gas.”
“A rendezvous with whom?”
“West coast operations. They have a chopper arriving in seven hours. They’ll take us to Cali.”
“Who was it? Did they mention Brian?” She asked eagerly.
“No. That was Colonel Hamilton, acting head of operations on the west coast. He just now got notice that the helicopter I was supposed to be on didn’t make it. Better late than never I guess.”
His voice was raspy and he gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles went white as he continued. “The government has fallen. Congress was in session when all this broke out so they all, almost all, evacuated to Mount Weather. Something, they don’t know what, went wrong, the infection made it inside the shelter and once it got loose, there was no stopping it. The whole complex is a giant tomb of the walking dead.”
Bea asked, “So it happened just now?”
“No. I’m sure it happened days ago but they hushed it up as much as possible. Don’t want to appear vulnerable or other countries will take advantage of the situation. Now it seems there aren’t a whole lot of functioning governments left anywhere. It’s worldwide anarchy now, according to the colonel. They couldn’t do a flyover of Mount Weather. They didn’t know where I was and the colonel thought I might be in the area and wanted someone who could mount an on the ground rescue if needed. That reminds me, they’re going to enable GPS tracking on my phone again. The colonel should be able to find us now.”
“A colonel is in charge of west coast operations? I thought it would be someone with higher rank.”
David laughed a short, bitter laugh. “The generals are almost all dead or nobody can find them. I’m sure Colonel Hamilton will get a field promotion soon. There probably isn’t a lot of time for an investiture ceremony right now.”
“I’m trying to remember the order of succession. The Vice-President follows the President and after the VP it’s the Speaker of the House. Then the president of the Senate I guess but after that I can’t remember.”
“I think it goes through the Cabinet secretaries after that. The thing is, they all evacuated to Mount Weather at first, then they were going to divide up and go to other shelters. It never happened.”
“I have to tell you I don’t know what Mount Weather is. I assume it’s like the Greenbrier?”
“Yeah, basically. It has everything needed for ‘continuity of government’. A hospital, vast amounts of food, broadcast facilities, even an underground lake. All of it inside blast doors thick enough to deflect a nuclear event. It’s carved from rock that dates back to the Pre-Cambrian period. None of that stood against a virus, did it?”
Bea felt surprisingly shaken by the news. Employed by the government she nevertheless shared the cynicism evinced by most for the feds. The jokes about government incompetence, intrusiveness, and inefficiency- she had heard them all and most were true. Still, it had been a constant in everyone’s lives and during times of national emergency, they often came through. Especially the military. Almost everyone knew someone in the armed services, risking their lives and trying to do the right thing in extremely dangerous and difficult circumstances.
“By the way, those two guys back there were responsible for the tree decorations from last night. Or so they claimed. I got the impression they were trying to form some sort of survivalist compound. They wouldn’t tell me if there were others.”
“There probably were more of them; that was too much work for just two people to string that many up. Incredibly dangerous too. I’ll never understand what motivates people to do things like that. My grandad was in Vietnam and once saw an entire family, all dead, placed on chairs around their kitchen table and tied in place. Someone had even put dishes on the table in front of them. Insane.”
Tree covered hillsides, punctuated by an occasional road sign, flashed by. The gas hand was below an eighth and dropping.
“I hear a thump, do you?”
Bea listened. “Yes, maybe it’s this section of road?”
“I’m not sure. Almost sounds like a tire.”
There was a sign advertising a travel station/truck stop at the next exit.
We’re going to have to take a shot at this. Feel up to it?” David asked.
“Maybe we can find some food,” she replied.
They coasted up the exit ramp and turned right. It was a pretty standard set-up, one area of pumps for cars and another for trucks. There was a “Doc in the Box”, several fast-food places, and a mini-mart. Best of all, lights shone from inside the building and LED numbers glowed from the pump displays. Three large semi’s remained parked next to the diesel pumps.
The car thumped as they cruised over to the gas pumps and got out. The left rear tire was flat. Dismayed, David checked the trunk for a spare, hoping the car had one. It did but it was flat, too.
“Do you have any change? I’ll have to fill this before I can change it.”
Bea didn’t but they found a couple of dollars’ worth in the console and under the floor mats.
“I’ll go inside and try to turn on the gas.”
“Thanks. We’re pump five.” David picked up the tire and she headed for the building.
Wind gusts, warm and smelling of damp earth and smoke, whipped her hair across her face and blew trash and dead leaves across the pavement. A crow, black and shiny, perched proprietarily over the glass entry doors, only flying away when she waved her arms and shouted at it. Gun held low, she went inside.
Behind the counter was a panel of switches. She flipped the one labeled “five”, heard a click and then numbers started scrolling on the display.
The store had been robbed but not ransacked. All the beer was gone and the cash register drawers were open and empty. Wondering how much the thieves actually enjoyed that cash, she helped herself to a Coke and some cashews, savoring the sweet fizzy taste and the nutty crunch. The caffeine went to her head and she felt better and somehow clearer than she had in days.
Tee shirts with various logos hung from a rack near the Dunkin’ Donuts counter. The only one in her size was emblazoned with a Superman “S” logo. It would do, in fact anything would do right now. Once again she regretted all her lost swag from the outlet mall, especially her coat. Before she changed in the ladies’ room she scrubbed away as much mud and blood as she could. Splashing her face she inspected the new split in her swollen upper lip. This one would probably leave a scar.
Back in the mini-mart, she now began looting in earnest and took all the packaged food she could carry as well as bottled water. Chips, crackers, nuts and dried fruit, all looked heaven-sent to her, shiny plastic packaging crackling in her hands.
Outside, David aired up the spare tire and finished pumping the gas. Bea handed his coat back to him and he grunted and threw it in the car, raising an eyebrow at her Superman shirt. The day was still warming and it wasn’t even noon yet. The car rocked precariously on the jack as he tackled the lug nuts but he waved away her offer to help.
The wind still whipped around the parking lot, rattling the aluminum roofs over the pumps. Another crow, very large with black wings spread wide, flapped overhead. It circled lazily then landed on one of the three semi-trucks. A Walmart truck. Carrying who knew what type of merchandise. She smiled.
Climbing up onto the bumper was easy but sliding the locking bars open was a different matter. Finding a rock she finally hammered them until they opened. Her hand was bleeding and she wiped it on her new shirt then threw the rock at anot
her crow circling the truck. She pulled hard on the bar and then swung the door wide.
The odor rolled out like a rancid wave and immediately she pushed the door back but the wind caught it and slammed it open. Gouts of dark blood splattered the interior walls. Infected burst forth from the trailer like maggots from a dead dog. Stumbling forward they fell to the ground, dragging their entangled, blackened entrails behind them, collapsing in an ungainly heap on the pavement. They began to moan excitedly.
She backed away, shouting a warning to David over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, David. Really, really sorry but-”
David turned and saw them, keeping one hand on the spare. “Don’t. Just hold them off as long as you can.” He turned back to the car.
The dead began struggling to their feet. Bea fired, one shot missing entirely, the other merely blowing out the knee of a shambling corpse. She was going to keep missing at this distance.
Hands shaking she walked closer, firing more carefully. A dead girl, faster than the others, reached her, shredded, rotted lips exposing broken, stained teeth. She wore a blue spandex tank dress covered with dark clots of flesh and still clutched a hemp purse in one hand. Bea shot her through the throat. She rocked with the blow but kept coming until Bea finally put a bullet through her left eye.
They were all on their feet now and coming in fast. She stopped another one with a headshot causing those behind her to fall but they were soon on their feet and she kept retreating, glancing over her shoulder at David. Most of them hadn’t noticed him yet so she began to back toward the mini-mart, keeping them interested in her. The gun spat fire again, blowing reeking lumps of flesh and long black hair from a dead woman onto the child stumping eagerly along behind.
“Oh no.” She squinted and fired again, not looking at the now headless bodies she had just felled. The dead behind stumbled over them and fell. She held the gun steady and kept backing away.
David had the spare in place and finished tightening the first nut. The little tire looked ridiculously undersized. Gunfire rang out somewhere close and he could only assume Bea was handling the situation. That familiar moaning and rotten meat smell drifted his way and he grabbed the wrench, accidentally knocking a nut under the car. He swore quietly, flattening himself on the ground, feeling under the car for the nut and not finding it. Something glinted on the pavement near the gas pumps. He walked around the car and snatched the nut up angrily only to glimpse dirty feet, shredded skin dragging, now waiting for him back on the other side of the car.
Adrenaline fueled he stalked back and buried the tire iron in a mouth of broken teeth, black fluid running down his arms. Pulling it free he pushed the slumped body aside and fumbled with the now gore-slick nuts. In the corner of his eye he saw more dead reeling his way. He twisted the last nut one more time then turned around and gored the ripe skull of a teen wearing nothing but the shreds of an Imagine Dragons tee shirt. She went down like a collapsed wind sock. He heard a scream and looked around.
Bea had inadvertently backed into a corner beside the mini-mart where evergreens hid the dumpsters. She was out of ammo and the dead were closing in, their putrid smell overwhelming that of the rotting garbage. Climbing to the top of the fence behind her she looked down upon a deep ditch full of muddy water that ran the length of the fence. She hesitated.
A mold-covered woman reached her first and raked her shins with the sharp bone tips of her fingers, mouth stretched wide. Tiny mushrooms sprouted amongst her broken teeth and a stump of a tongue moved from side to side. The rest of the throng closed in fast.
She jumped and splashed down on top of a body, hidden just beneath the water, knees scraped painfully by a jutting ribcage. Crying out in pain she scrambled up the muddy bank, expecting to be pulled back down by rotting hands at any second.
Soaking wet and covered in mud, she stopped to catch her breath, eyeing the ditch warily. The water roiled and a detached arm floated to the surface followed by a torso, distended in decomposition. Bea flinched away but nothing else surfaced. Whoever was in there was really dead.
Wheels screeched around the corner and David came to a stop. She jumped inside, yanked the door closed and they were back on the road with the dead soon left far behind.
“Illegals,” David said.
“What? Oh. They were being smuggled in, weren’t they? I knew Walmart was evil but-”
“Funny. The truck was either stolen or a fake. Coyotes have a lot of tricks they use to get them across the border. I only saw women. They thought they were coming here for a better life but it was probably a prostitution ring.”
Shivering, Bea turned the heat up. “I took some peroxide from the mini-mart. I’m going to try to clean your ear. This will sting a little.”
“How bad is it? I haven’t looked at it yet,” he flipped the rearview mirror. “Crap! That’s practically a hole.”
It wasn’t really but the tip of the ear was gone and the bullet had scorched a path through his hair. He didn’t flinch when Bea drizzled peroxide on it.
“It bled a lot but scalp wounds do. I don’t see any signs of infection.” She brushed his hair away from his ear and blew on the peroxide to dry it.
The pleasure he felt at the touch of her hands was incredibly stirring but he deliberately tamped it down. He had done his best to forget their brief almost-tryst back in D.C. and she never referred to it again. But now she continued to touch him gently along his temple and neck. The nearness of her was intoxicating and when she sat back and buckled her seat belt he felt bereft.
“Don’t worry. It’s healing. Think of it as enhancing your rugged good looks.” Her smile had a sweetness to it that took him by surprise.
“Kind of like that mud below your eye is a beauty mark.”
She laughed and rubbed her face. “I know. I’ve never been this dirty in my life. I’ve been having shower fantasies for days.”
At the sound of her laughter he began having shower fantasies too. To distract himself he turned the radio on and then hit scan. Static blared through the speakers.
The day grew warmer. This road was taking them south and they should be near Memphis in a few hours if their luck held. Road signs for various communities flashed by. On one for Newbern someone had painted out the population number and written, “All Dead, Keep Moving.”
Bea said, “There was a body in that ditch I jumped into. It had decomposed to the point it was falling apart. I don’t know if it had turned or if whoever it was just died.”
“As it warms up we will probably see more and more of that,” David replied.
“Where exactly are we going? It’s not downtown Memphis is it?”
“No, I’m trying to avoid that. We need to get to the other side of the river. There are several bridges well above Memphis. I want to cross in Ripley; it’s much smaller than Memphis.”
“Why do we have to cross over? Couldn’t they pick us up anywhere?”
“They’re not flying any more missions across the Mississippi river. The eastern half of the country is considered lost and the Mississippi is the designated cut-off. It’s sort of an arbitrary decision and I don’t know who made it. They may be trying to save fuel.”
“Cut-off as in quarantined? Will someone shoot us if we try to cross?”
“I don’t think so. They don’t have enough people to enforce a quarantine."
Again the enormity of the situation pressed in on her. All the immense means of commerce stopped. Vast ships at sea slowly turning into derelict, drifting hulks. Food rotting in warehouses or in the fields. Thousands of miles of paved roads overtaken by weeds and vines. Wharves and docks collapsing into harbors. Homes destroyed by leaking natural gas lines, their uncomprehending owners charred by the flames. Hydroelectric plants failing and concrete dams bursting due to lack of maintenance. Nuclear power facilities melting down. People dying from injuries or illnesses that were once easily treatable. Women dying in childbirth.
Bea filled their backpacks with
as much of her stolen food and water as possible. She hoped they would drive across the bridge but who knew? It could be blocked, forcing them to travel on foot.
A pack of dogs emerged from a stand of trees and crossed the road in front of them. In the rearview mirror David saw a pack of dead stumble from the trees and cross after them. The dead were slow and clumsy; the dogs were in very little danger.
They took the exit for Ripley in the late afternoon. The two-lane road led them past farms and small local stores before they entered a stone-paved town square with a fountain and an ornately carved, wooden band-stand. A tattered American flag still waved in the breeze in front of a red-brick post office. Next to that was a rather grand building with massive, white columns and a door partially ajar. A brass plaque identified it as the local courthouse and police station. The only dead they saw were in the distance, shuffling around a Dairy Queen parking lot. David pulled into a space in front of the police station.
“We need ammo and more weapons if we can get them. Also, there might be shower facilities here. I can’t guarantee they’re working. Are you game?”
“Absolutely.”
The smell hit them as soon as they entered the building. Slowly, guns at the ready, they scanned the atrium. Bea pulled her tee shirt up to cover her mouth and nose and they entered the door marked “County Sheriff.” Chairs, phones, and computers were smashed and overturned and papers and files lay scattered. Bullet casings littered the area near the front door and bloody footprints crisscrossed the room before fading away out in the atrium. They saw no one, infected or otherwise, but the smell- where was it coming from?
A solid-looking wooden door with a small glass inset led to a hallway with four jail cells, two on each side. The door wasn’t locked and hinges squeaked as they opened it and stepped onto the scuffed tile.
Chapter Six
Bed springs squeaked and a man, hair wild and wearing jailhouse orange, got slowly to his feet and stood beside his bunk. He stared at them as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes then ran to the bars, shaking them violently.
The Living Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Coast Page 9
