Healers

by Munson, Brad

  He recognized that voice, as clipped and tense as it always was: His boss, Francis Sherman. “Halfway to the Fac roof for a look-see,” he said. “What happened?”

  “Every electronic lock in town just popped open,” Sherman grated. “At least half a dozen breaches. Infected inside the perimeter.”

  “Well, crap,” Krueger said, and double-timed it up to the fifth and final floor. “Let me get eyes on it.” He shoved at the roof hatch with the flat of his hand and launched himself up, turning and rolling as he hit the asphalt sheeting. The freezing air hit him like a block of ice. Then and only then did he regret not grabbing his parka on the way out.

  “Screw it,” he muttered to himself. “I’ve felt worse.”

  He staggered over the uneven tiles to the parapet at the roof’s edge. He had set up a tidy little sniper’s nest there long ago, exactly where he could get the best view of the surrounding cityscape. And lucky him: He’d left a jacket up here from weeks earlier. It wouldn’t be nearly warm enough, he knew, but it was better than freezing to death half-naked.

  He stood tall at the building’s edge and surveyed the terrain, no longer worried about returning fire – the infected were awful, he knew, but at least they weren’t armed. Sure enough: His impossibly sharp eyes couldn’t find a living human anywhere, but they could easily pick out the unmistakable figures of shamblers, staggering down the otherwise empty streets. Their unique, lurching gait and emaciated silhouettes made identification all too simple.

  “Sure enough,” he said into his walkie-talkie. “Multiple contacts from east and south – maybe more. Only shamblers, as far as I can tell. No sprinters.” At least not yet, he added silently. Sprinters had become more and more scarce in the last couple of months, but they were far from rare, and incredibly dangerous.

  “Do what you can,” Sherman buzzed from the radio. “Just keep them away from the Fac.”

  Duh, he thought, and hefted his rifle. “We gotta get those gates closed,” he said as he sighted on one shambler who was already far too close to the Fac’s entrance. He caressed the trigger, welcomed the recoil, and half-smiled as the infected’s skull exploded in a black-red cloud of meat and mist.

  “I’m aware of that,” Sherman said, and Krueger made a face at the angry, bitter tone he heard. He was very glad he was not the one who’d be facing Francis Sherman when he was in that frame of mind. “I’m going to take care of this myself.”

  Krueger barely heard him. He was already drawing down on Shambler Number Three, and suddenly quite grateful for the extra stash of ammo he’d hidden in his nest just a few weeks before.

  An icy breeze cut at his cheek. He didn’t care. He was working.

  *****

  Sherman punched through the door of his office, into the corridor of Omaha Command and Control, and ran – ran like a man thirty years younger than he was. They had carefully chosen this five-story building with the three sub-basements for their base of operations. It was a significant distance from the Fac, a mile and a half from the nearest perimeter fence, and surrounded on three sides by wide, flat parking lots that gave the guards an unobstructed view and a clear field of fire. The fourth side was fronted by a reflective pool, drained long ago and being prepared now for urban farming.

  But Sherman knew the truth: None of that mattered, none of it, if the goddamn shamblers got into the city.

  He took a sharp right, shoved at a panic bar, and bounded down the stairs to Basement Three, taking the steps two at a time. The shock of his boots on the metal landings jolted his entire body, and he couldn’t have cared less: He had to get there fast.

  The C&C had been wired months ago: he would get a clear radio signal in every room and all the way down to the root cellar. He would need that, to coordinate defense efforts and ask for clean-up after he killed the stupid son of a bitch who had just put every man and woman in Omaha in mortal danger.

  The third sub-basement was one big room – no offices, no closets or storage. Just a room, with an unusually high ceiling for a basement. The far wall, as far from the stairwell entrance as possible, was covered, top to bottom and side to side, with metal racks crammed to capacity with electronic equipment.

  Boyd Lawson, their new tech master, sat in the precise center of the wall of electronics, surrounded by twinkling lights and twisted wires, but somehow dominating all that hardware. He was their master. He was their god.

  “Boyd!” Sherman shouted, gritting his teeth to keep from saying what he really wanted to say. “What did you do?”

  Boyd was fat. Not just flabby, not just out of shape, but fat, in a world where fat humans simply didn’t exist anymore. He was happy to tell the convoluted story of how he’d maintained his prodigious weight after Morningstar had reached America; it was a tale of horror that everyone at C&C had heard half a dozen times since he had appeared at the front gate in his freshly washed and waxed 4x4 just two months before. And it didn’t matter one bit – not now.

  Now he looked up, goggle-eyed, at Francis Sherman, his fish-like eyes blinking behind his horn rims.

  “It wasn’t me, man!”

  Sherman gave him the most dangerous look in his arsenal. Boyd actually reared back in his chair. It looked like he was about to swallow his tongue. “I mean, sir. It wasn’t me, sir.”

  “Then what was it? You’re the one responsible for security. You’re the one that controls those locks.”

  “But I didn’t build it! That shit was here when I got here!”

  “I don’t care!” Sherman said, low and tight – though it sounded like he was bellowing. “Just get them closed. Now.”

  Boyd’s fingers were already flying over his keyboard – one of three. “It’s some kinda system failure,” he said. “Something deep in the software, I don’t know ...”

  Sherman’s jaw set. “Sabotage?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know. More like a crash, a flaw, an accident, a – there. There, I got it.” He tapped in a long sequence … then paused … then typed in four more characters and hit RETURN.

  Sherman could hear it, echoing through the entire building, the entire community:

  CHUNK.

  The lock had re-engaged.

  Sherman didn’t like this kid. He never had. But he was as unique and valuable to recovering Omaha – and the entire nation – as Krueger the sniper or Dr. Demilio the research scientist. So as much as he wanted to dress down this disrespectful, slovenly man-boy … no. Not now.

  “I’m not done with you,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “But I have other problems to attend to first.”

  He didn’t wait for any more excuses or apologies. He turned on his boot heel and sprinted out of the basement, taking the stairs up just as quickly as he had coming down.

  He paused in the C&C’s main floor just long enough to grab a rifle and fill every pocket he had with ammunition. Then he was kicking through the door to join his people on the steps of the headquarters as they took down the dead invaders one-on-one.

  The Watch teams had already been dispatched; the chatter on his radio told him that most of the gates had relocked without incident, and that Stiles’ bizarre but effective tactic of using the bodies of the shamblers as barriers was actually working where it was needed. Now it was a matter of systematically disposing of the infected that had made it past the fences, and that meant–

  Sherman saw one coming out of the shadows at the far end of the parking lot: A former man, the remains of neatly coifed gray hair matted by months in the rain and snow, one arm twisted at an impossible angle, the other up and grasping at the air, clutching to spread its deadly cargo. The old soldier almost marched across the asphalt, careful of his footing, ignoring the cold, until he was barely fifteen feet from the creature. His gun came up. He took careful aim. A single shot drilled the monster from the point of its decaying nose to the back of its filthy skull, and it fell.
It would never rise again.

  Three more were coming towards Sherman now. It was as if they loved the sound of gunfire; they couldn’t resist its call. Sherman turned to sight on a second one, but he never had the chance to fire: A member of the Watch, already hard at work, brought it down with a round in its temple. The other two fell under the blade of a massive machete, wielded by an equally massive Samoan citizen that Sherman scarcely recognized. The Samoan beheaded one of the shamblers – a stringy old woman with only a few teeth left – with a single stroke, then crushed the skull of the other with a two-fisted blow of the machete’s hilt. He had a blood-streaked grin on his broad face the entire time. Sherman thought he actually seemed to be enjoying himself. Got to meet that man, he told himself.

  A camo-painted Jeep skidded around the corner, almost out of control on the icy streets, and barreled across the parking lot toward him. As it approached, Sherman opened all channels on his walkie. “Street by street,” he said. “Structure by structure. Get them all. All.” He listened carefully to the static-riddled chatter that came back: Acknowledgments. Agreements. The occasional cheer.

  He’d let his carefully selected and well-trained citizen-brigade take care of the rest.

  Omaha would not fall – not this time.

  The Jeep skidded to a stop just a few feet from him. The driver hopped up, then hopped out, grinning madly.

  “Just wanted to make sure you were okay!” Anna Demilio said.

  “I’m fine,” Sherman said, looking at her closely. She was trembling, and not just from excitement. Her eyes were too wide. “What happened?”

  “Dr. Meyer,” she said, and wiped a spatter of blood off her cheek with the back of one hand. “Got loose. Almost lost it.”

  He took a step toward her, suddenly alarmed. “Jesus, Anna. Are you all right?”

  She nodded too many times, very fast. “I’m good, I’m good,” she said, and he could hear her voice beginning to shake. The reality of what had happened, what she did, was just beginning to sink in. “I didn’t have any choice, but ... but ...” She looked at him again, and he was relieved to see her eyes were a little clearer now, her gaze a little steadier. “I just needed to see you.”

  He put hand on her arm and squeezed “Me, too. It’s going to be all right.”

  “I know it is,” she said. “I trust you.”

  “But what about you? Dr. Meyer? All that infected blood ...”

  She smiled – a genuine smile this time, if very thin. “No worries,” she said. “Luckily, I took the vaccine yesterday. First verified batch.”

  He looked at her tangled hair, her blood-spattered tunic. He looked at the gore dripping from her long, talented fingers.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Lucky you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “I do not like helicopters,” Mbutu Ngasy said. He was very firm about it, openly scowling at the chopper that sat waiting for him in the parking lot behind the Omaha C&C.

  “I know,” Sherman said. “You hated them even before all this, back in Africa.”

  “They shouldn’t work. It’s a crime against nature. Like the bumblebee.”

  Sherman gave him a close look to make sure his statuesque African ally was joking – or at least half-joking. “You know how much you will be missed?” he said.

  “I am aware.”

  He nodded. “Yes, you are. You are aware. Which is exactly why we’re sending you, of all people, to do this thing.”

  “This thing” was a unique assignment. Sherman had asked him, as a personal favor, to serve as the community’s representative at McCoy Air Force Base, where the President and his Joint Chiefs were based.

  “We have to know what they’re planning, Mbutu,” Sherman said. “We have to be able to trust them, and I know you will see the truth there, if there’s any to be seen.”

  Mbutu kept staring at the blurred blades of the helicopter’s rotors. He was clearly reluctant to look Francis Sherman directly in the eyes. “I will.”

  “I think the President’s people and the Army brass are good,” Sherman said. “I also think they’re desperate. They’ve got a lot to deal with: The infected, the RSA, their own limited resources … and so much hunger out there. Hunger for food, for safety, for power. All kinds of power.”

  Mbutu nodded. “We shall see,” he said. He patted the zipped pocket of his heavy winter coat with long, graceful fingers. It was the darkest skin Sherman had ever seen; he was reminded of that every day he set eyes on his old friend. “I have the dedicated satellite phone,” he said. “I will call every day at sunset GMT.” He finally offered a sidelong glance, almost a smile. “I will not give it up.”

  “You shouldn’t have to,” Sherman said. “It was part of our deal.”

  “But,” Mbutu said, and gave an eloquent shrug.

  Sherman huffed out a bitter chuckle. “But.” His breath came out as a cloud of silver vapor.

  The sliding door on the Bell 206 LongRanger banged open and a figure in a dark jumpsuit and an almost spherical helmet gestured to him. Time to go was the clear message. Mbutu hefted his duffle and ducked his head. “We will speak soon,” he said, then looked Sherman full in the face for the first time. “Thank you for everything, Francis.”

  Sherman found himself unable to speak. There was so much to say to this man – too much, really. All they had experienced since Africa. All the responsibility and weight that was on their shoulders now ...

  All he could do was nod. Mbutu nodded back, bent even lower, and duck-walked to the chopper.

  *****

  Sherman’s second and even less pleasant interrogation of Duncan Boyd took place an hour later, in his office on the third-floor terrace of the C&C. He had chosen his office carefully: One long wall was floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over recovering Omaha and gave him an instantaneous and sometimes stunning view of the sky, the city, the dangerous world in which they lived. The opposite wall was made up of windows as well. This floor-to-ceiling set looked down on the huge second-floor bullpen where virtually every government operative in Omaha worked, day or night, never stopping, bent over his or her own precious computer or whispering into an equally precious radio. Two months, Sherman thought as he looked down on the bustling, muted bullpen. Two months of raiding Radio Shacks and police stations, two months of hacking together just enough power to keep it steady. But we got it together. And so far, so good.

  There was a sharp knock off to his right, from the narrow door to the stairwell in the south wall. It was an innovation he’d insisted on, for security and practicality. He needed fast, private access to the ground floor and the roof, and a simple stairway was the best solution. He’d already used it more times than he could count. No questions: It was more than occasionally useful to have visitors come and go without being easily viewed by passersby.

  He walked briskly to the corner of the room and closed the blinds to the bullpen with a single pull. This one’s private, he thought, then turned and called out, “Come in.”

  The door opened. Broad-shouldered, tightly built Angela Castillo entered, her hand firmly holding the arm of the fattest man in the modern world: Duncan Boyd. She moved just a little too quickly for Boyd’s comfort, exactly as intended.

  He tried to pull free of her. “Oh-kay,” he said. “I’m coming.”

  Sherman nodded at the padded – but not too padded – armchair that sat opposite his polished wooden desk. Taking over this high-tech executive building back in August had afforded them a few perks; the fancy furniture was one of them. Castillo deposited her charge in the chair with a thick thump, then backed a few feet away and crossed her arms, the picture of the modern soldier who was prepared to take absolutely no shit at all.

  “I still have a lot of questions,” Sherman said without preamble. No welcome, no offer of tea or water, no pleasantries at all. That wasn’t the message
he wanted to send.

  “Well, so have I,” the computer nerd said, sounding defiant and querulous as the same time.

  Sherman took one step – just one – towards Boyd, and the fat man visibly cringed. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said, very low. “This isn’t a ‘conversation.’ This isn’t a ‘chat.’ This is an interrogation, Boyd, and you will give me answers, not smart-ass banter. Answers.”

  Boyd swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said quietly, then quickly corrected himself: “Yes, sir.”

  Sherman nodded. Better. He rounded the desk and sat down. Castillo moved slightly to the left, standing to the side halfway between the techie and her commander. “So … how did it happen?”

  “Well, it wasn’t sabotage or terrorism or anything like that,” Boyd said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I checked,” Boyd said, his voice dripping with contempt. Then, once again, he realized what he had done and said it again, in a far more civilized tone. “I … checked,” he said, swallowing hard one more time. “I looked for any signs of intrusion, a breach, from outside. We don’t have a real internet anymore, but we do have links to a few places, a few networks that survived. You … you know that.” He risked a glance up at Sherman, then quickly looked away again. “I mean, of course you do. But … no. Nothing like that.”

  Sherman had to admit, he was relieved. The RSA was enough of a threat in the real world; the idea of a cyber-attack at this point was more than he wanted to handle.

  “So what’s the explanation?”

  Boyd shrugged. “Just bad coding, ma—. Uh, sir. The locks and gates and stuff, they’re brand new. But the software that controls them? That’s just some scaled up shi—. Ahhh … crap from some old building security system. It finally just kind of collapsed.”