by Z. A. Recht
A black-capped chickadee, newly awakened, settled on the hood of the truck. It sang a few notes, then stopped, glanced about, and began to preen its feathers.
Behind the chickadee sat a narrow alleyway, as yet untouched by the breaking sun. Its entrance was clogged with collapsed cardboard boxes and empty bottles, and beyond lay nothing but brick and shadow. Something moved within the darkness, drawn forth by the little speck of life perched on the hood of the burned-out truck.
With a shuddering moan, a bloated face loomed out of the alleyway, and a pair of sore-covered arms grabbed at the bird.
The chickadee was gone in a flash, flying around the corner with a surprised chirp.
Behind it, the infected stood in place, shoulders slumped forward. Once, it had been a human being. It was no longer. It stared in the direction the bird had gone, a bit of putrid, virus-laden drool slipping from the corner of its mouth. Frustrated at the escape of its prey, the infected flailed its arm once, batting at a nearby weed, and shuffled forward a few steps, scattering cardboard and trash underfoot.
A fine silk tie, now wrinkled and crusted with bits of dried flesh, hung loosely around its neck. A once-white button-up shirt was marred by a tear near the shoulder and a dark brown bloodstain. A similar stain coated both sleeves nearly to the elbows, hinting at a feast long since past. His dress pants had kept remarkably well, save for two holes worn at the knees, where the infected had knelt during the daytime hours in the shade. His leather shoes were in desperate need of a shine.
He might have had ambitions, once. He might have had dreams.
Now, he had only instinct.
The infected looked up, in the direction of the morning sun, groaned, and flailed its arm again before turning its back on the brightness. It spotted another patch of shadow in the distance, felt drawn toward it, and began to march slowly in its direction. It stumbled when it hit the curb, but caught itself on the corner of the truck, and continued onward.
The infected plodded along the middle of the street like a macabre marionette. Its legs jerked, its shoulders swayed, its head seemed barely connected to the body, so freely it rolled, but it never once deviated from its path. It thought only of its destination. There wasn’t enough mind left for anything else.
Lack of attentiveness was certainly why the dead thing didn’t bother to look around as it plodded along. If it had, it might have seen the two men with rifles, crouched low on a nearby rooftop.
One of them settled the barrel of his rifle on the lip of the roof, and took careful aim.
The crack of a gunshot echoed off the buildings, shattering the still morning air.
A block away, the black-capped chickadee was again startled, and took off from its new perch, silently resolving to find quieter territory.
The infected’s head smacked off the pavement, a neat hole drilled through its temple. The skull, six months rotten, split open. Brackish blood and brain matter leaked out, forming a small pool around the figure. It lay still, spilling infected vitae on the ground.
On the rooftop, the shooter stood, worked the rifle bolt, and ejected the spent round over the edge. It pinwheeled through the air and tinkled off the sidewalk, joining an ever-growing scattering of empty brass casings. The shooter worked a fresh round into the chamber, his eyes on the freshly dispatched shambler.
“Nice shot, Krueger!” said the second man, peering at the infected through a pair of pocket-sized binoculars. “That does it for him.”
“Thank you,” said the sharpshooter, squatting low and resting the barrel of his weapon on the raised edge of the roof. “Poor schmuck walked right past us. That’s getting pretty rare. First one in a week to come within fifty yards.”
“Well, we’ve cleared out most of the buildings in these blocks, so I guess there aren’t many left in the neighborhood. It might be a different story downtown,” said the spotter, reaching down to rummage through a faded olive drab knapsack at his feet. He pulled out a battered Nikon camera, checked it over, and snapped a shot of the fresh kill with the sunrise in the background. “That’ll make a good one, if I ever get it developed.”
Krueger watched him as he worked. “Ever thought about building a dark room, Denton?” asked the soldier, holding back a yawn. The pair had been on guard duty all night, and their shift was nearly over. “It’s not like we have a lack of materials. Or room.”
“True.” Denton nodded, putting the camera back in the knapsack. “Maybe I’ll get around to it, after we’re done with the perimeter.”
The roof the two men were sitting on was spacious and flat, providing them with a 360-degree view of the surrounding neighborhood. Other than the stairwell door, the only other occupants of the roof were four long banks of angled solar panels. Their original purpose was to serve as a backup for the Fac, but they were now pulling duty as the primary generators. With the return of the sun, a security lamp over the stairwell door had begun to glow faintly, signaling that a charge was once again flowing. There were banks of batteries below, recharging a bit every day, but they were reserved solely for the biosafety level four laboratory.
The perimeter Denton referred to surrounded the entire building, which the group had taken to calling “the Fac” more than anything else. The fence also circled the Fac’s narrow yard, and part of a nearby industrial complex. Chain-link fence had been the original deterrent, enclosing an area of a little over two acres, but over weeks the resident survivors had improved their defenses, not wanting to be caught off guard by a wave of infected with little more than metal mesh between them and certain death. They had dug a deep, narrow trench outside the fence, using the earth they moved to fill sacks liberated from the neighboring factory. The makeshift sandbags were stacked ten high and three deep on the inside of the fence, forming a heavy buttress that supported the fence and, hopefully, would keep it from being pushed over by dozens of angry infected.
The group hoped to create a safe outdoor environment where they could relax or grow their own food. No one was comfortable outdoors anymore. Not without a good, sturdy wall between them and the Morningstar strain, at least.
“You could put it in the basement,” said Krueger, still on about the dark room. “In one of the labs Anna and Becky aren’t using. There are four of ’em down there and they’re only using one. Well, two, if you count Mason’s room. There are no windows. It’s perfect. You could get all those developed in your downtime. Hell, I’d like to see some of them. You’ve been taking them since Suez, right?”
“Before,” corrected Denton. “I was attached to Alpha, covering Iraq, before they were redeployed to the canal. I have some shots of them there, too.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that. I’m an Echo. Or I was. How many rolls you got in there?” Krueger asked, leaning forward to peer in the top of Denton’s loose, faded knapsack.
Denton flipped the cover shut. “Thirty or so.”
Krueger whistled in appreciation and rested his head against the edge of the roof. He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face for a moment. He sat up as a new thought struck him.
“Hey, you know, you might just be the only photographer left who saw all this go down, and took pictures to prove it,” Krueger said, raising his eyebrows and grinning. “You could end up famous.”
“Yeah,” laughed Denton, “I can see the awards hanging on my living room wall right now. If anybody ever gives ’em out again.”
That thought quieted the pair, and they sat in silence.
The sun rose higher in the sky.
Directly below the watchmen, other survivors were beginning to stir. Thomas was the first to emerge from the rec room, where he bunked on the couch. Though he was of average height, his perfect posture and confident, purposeful way of moving made him seem inches taller. A perpetual scowl was etched on his face. He was dressed in a neatly ironed pair of jeans and a tucked-in, button-up shirt. He wore a pair of scuffed, well-used combat boots, and as he strode down the hall toward the Fac’s makeshift
kitchen they clomped and clicked and echoed off the concrete walls. No one ever dared tell him to his face, but Command Sergeant Major Thomas and his boots were the group’s collective alarm clock.
If they had told him, however, they might have learned that Thomas was well aware of what he was doing. A smug smile threatened to ease the scowl as he marched along. The sound of muffled groans reached his ears. The veteran could imagine the sleepy survivors pulling pillows over their heads and retreating farther under their blankets. As for the sergeant major, Thomas just wasn’t the type that enjoyed lounging in the sack. Sleep was a chore to be taken care of once a day. Then it was back to business.
Even so, there were some luxuries Thomas allowed himself to indulge in. One of the few was his morning cup of coffee. He had gotten into the habit of brewing a pot first thing every day, extra strong. The Fac had a break room just past the lobby, and the group had turned it into a functional, if Spartan, kitchen. A line of cabinets ran along the far wall. The only appliance had been a microwave oven, but it had been deemed a waste of electricity. The only electric appliances the survivors used now were a double-burner hot plate and a coffeepot. Jack and Mitsui had just finished installing a cast-iron woodstove against the outer wall, but no one in the group had yet mastered the art of cooking on it. Three round folding tables filled the center of the room, surrounded by metal chairs. A chalkboard on rollers was pushed up against the nearest wall and was covered with a hand-drawn map of the Fac and the surrounding blocks, with every building and alleyway marked. An X was drawn through each building that had been searched and subsequently secured. Only a few, out near the edges of the board, farthest from the Fac, stood unmarked.
When Thomas entered the room, the first thing he noticed was an already-full coffee pot on the counter. The second was a woman slumped over the nearest table, her head resting on folded arms. A Styrofoam cup of the brew sat unfinished next to her. She did not stir as Thomas crossed the room to the counter to check the coffee. He sniffed at it, grimaced, and upended the pot into the sink. The coffee was cold and stale.
There was no fresh coffee left to be had in Omaha, but Thomas had no quarrel with the instant stuff. In fact, he preferred it. They didn’t pack gourmet blends in MREs, after all. Thomas reached into the cabinet above him and grabbed a fresh packet. He tore open the foil wrapper, poured in the grounds, and turned on the pot. The hard part done, he leaned back against the countertop to wait. In the meantime, he studied the room’s other occupant.
The woman at the table still hadn’t moved. If her back hadn’t been slowly rising and falling with each breath, Thomas might have mistaken her for a corpse. He considered waking her, but decided against it. She was probably exhausted. Anna Demilio spent most of every day, not to mention many of her nights, working in the laboratories in the Fac’s sublevel. She deserved her rest.
Thomas’s ears pricked up as he heard a soft padding in the hall. A moment later, a disheveled, bleary-eyed young Japanese woman appeared in the doorway. She wore plain white pajamas and a ridiculous pair of pink bunny slippers, complete with little yellow whiskers and button eyes. She stretched her arms above her head and sighed.
“Good morning!” Juni said, and only then noticed the sleeping doctor. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Dr. Demilio shifted and murmured in her sleep, but didn’t awaken. The girl slowly and silently wound her way across the kitchen to Thomas. In a much lower voice, she repeated: “Good morning!”
“I heard you the first time,” said Thomas. He didn’t bother whispering.
Thomas’s brusque manner was only off-putting to strangers. Junko Koji, cooped up in the same building with the man for months, wasn’t daunted in the least. “Do you know if we’re still going out today?” she asked in the same low voice.
Thomas shrugged.
“Did Frank tell you if he’s going to let me go this time?” Juni pressed.
Thomas shrugged again and glanced at the coffeepot. Only half-full. Or half-empty, he thought, depending on how your philosophy bends itself.
“I’d really like to go,” said Juni.
Thomas relented. “General Sherman doesn’t like sending untrained people into dangerous situations when he has other, better options,” Thomas said.
“I survived for months out there!” protested Juni. “I’m as tough as any of you.”
“You wear pink bunny slippers,” deadpanned Thomas, glancing at the girl’s footwear.
“That has nothing to do with it!” Juni said, her voice rising, forgetting about Anna as she stamped her foot on the ground in protest.
A groan diverted their attention to Anna. She had awoken during the brief conversation, and was rubbing the back of her neck, head still on the tabletop. “Oh, God, I did it again,” she lamented. “My neck feels like concrete.”
“Sleeping on a table will do that,” said Thomas. Behind him, the coffeepot burbled and clicked, cycle complete. He turned to fetch a cup from an overhead cabinet. “You have a bed. Sack out like the rest of us. You push too hard, you start getting sloppy. We need you sharp.”
As Thomas set about pouring himself a cup, Juni walked over to Anna and plopped down in the chair beside her. She rested her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, smiling at the Doctor. “He’s no fun. Another late night?”
Anna repeated her groan. “I came up at five to get something to drink, but I must have fallen asleep after I sat down. What time is it now?”
Juni glanced at a clock on the wall. “Seven-fifteen.”
Doctor Demilio gave an exaggerated shrug. “Two hours of sleep sounds about right. Guess I’d better get back downstairs.” She picked up the cup sitting next to her, took a swig, and quickly spat it back with a sound of disgust. “Ugh. Thomas, I’m going to steal some of your coffee, if you don’t mind. Mine’s gone stale.”
Thomas didn’t reply. He was staring out the kitchen’s only window, feet set shoulder width apart, one hand tucked behind his back while the other swirled around the steaming contents of his mug.
More sounds from the hall—a slamming door, rattling drawers, and muffled conversations—meant that other survivors were up and about. Today was another big day for the group. Dwindling supplies in their pantry meant yet another supply run was in order. Sherman had already told everyone to prepare for it. Every foray took them deeper into the city, and they’d been coming more often. The Fac now stood in the center of a four-block radius that had been picked clean of nonperishable food items and infected. The worst part, in Thomas’s mind, was the frequency of the trips. If they had a truck to load up, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but loading up with food one backpack at a time was hardly enough to feed fifteen mouths for very long.
But the same nagging worry tugged at the back of everyone’s mind: that sooner or later, they’d kick in the wrong door and stir up a hornet’s nest.
On scavenging days, everyone was on high alert, even the ones who stayed behind to hold the fort.
Anna Demilio poured herself a cup from the fresh pot and spooned in a heap of sugar, paused a moment, and added a second spoonful.
“You’re just asking for a crash,” grumbled Thomas, looking sideways at Anna.
“Preaching to the choir, Thomas,” was Anna’s riposte. She blew on the coffee to cool it as she took her leave, patting Juni on the shoulder as she passed. “Good luck today.”
“Oh, I’m just guarding the kitchen again,” pouted Juni, frowning at Thomas’s back. “Apparently people with pink bunny slippers can’t shoot straight.”
“Either way, you know where I’ll be,” Anna tossed over her shoulder. She headed for the rear of the building, to the stairwell that would take her to the basement. In a lower voice, she murmured to herself, “Back down in the dungeon with a laconic Austrian, a curious medic, and about fifty million bugs that want to kill me. I should have been a pediatrician.”
“A pedia-whatthefuck?” came a sudden outburst from the room to Anna’s left.
Without slow
ing, Anna shot back: “A pediatrician, Brewster. Greek. For a kid doctor. You know. The kind you’d go see if you got sick.”
A face framed by a shock of tangled brown hair poked out from the side room, looking indignant. “Yeah? Well, you’re . . . you’ve got poor fashion sense!”
Thomas caught laughter from across the hall as another pair of survivors left their respective rooms. He turned to see a man wearing a dirt-stained pair of coveralls shake his head. “First round of the day to Dr. Anna Demilio. She shoots, she scores!” he joked in a passable impression of a sports announcer. The other, a short, paper-thin Asian man, chuckled at the disappointed look on Brewster’s face.
“What do you want from me?” demanded Brewster as the pair passed by. He threw his arms wide. “I just woke up. I’m not on my game, yet! Hey!” Brewster struggled after them, stumbling and trying to pull on his boots as he went. “Come on, guys! Jack? Mitsui? Wait up! Give me a chance, here! What if I said something like, uh, she needed to go to a proctologist because she’s—”
“Too late,” interrupted Jack. When he noticed the soldier was following them, he added: “Mitsui and I are going to the roof to take over for Krueger and Denton. You should head to the kitchen. Frank said he wanted to get started early today.”
Brewster grumbled, but assented. By the time he had settled into one of the kitchen’s folding metal chairs and finished double-knotting his bootlaces, everyone had assembled. Several conversations kept the room humming.
At the table farthest from the door sat Mbutu Ngasy. Across from him sat Gregory Mason, late of the U.S. National Security Agency, or “No Such Agency,” as it was often jokingly referred to by the other branches. Every now and then, Mason would wince and unconsciously put a hand to his chest. He was still recovering from a serious wound received when the group had seized the Fac from its former hostile owners. A pistol round had punctured his lung and shattered a rib, and it was only through intense effort on the part of Anna Demilio, and continual observation by Rebecca Hall, that he had lived.
