“It’s my son’s.”
“I know. You’ve told me several times.”
He had? He didn’t remember that. “Do you have a son?”
She was packing his side with gauze and taping it down. “Yes, we have two sons and two daughters. They’re all grown up now.”
“Do they have Sombra C?”
“One of our sons does. Matthew. He’s in a harbor up in Oregon.”
“How did he get it?”
“His wife. It was an accident. She got infected at the juvenile facility where she worked as a guard, and gave it to him last winter.” She rolled Austin onto his side and tended the injury on his back. Wearing gloves, the man was cleaning off a pile of bloody grass and bits of fuzz from a metal table.
“What are you going to do with me?” Austin whispered, but he wasn’t sure all of the words made it out of his mouth. He fell into a strange sleep state, aware that he was on the bed yet also dreaming. Elania was there to tell him that getting shot wasn’t so bad. She showed him the hole in her head and the scrape on her leg from the bullet at the party.
The guys in the woods ripped the pills away from him. The boom of God’s voice came down from the sky, sounding like the marshmallow man’s. “I gave you a Zyllevir with your pain meds. You’re okay. Neesha, it’s almost one. We should get him into the cart.”
“Let’s give him one more dose. It’ll be hours before he gets there.”
Austin came back to the bed. A plain cart was beside it. The lid was open. It looked like the kind that people pushed through the streets when they were selling ice cream. Pills went down his throat and he asked, “What’s going on?”
“The relief truck will be here soon,” the man said. “We’re going to push you to it in this cart. We fill it up from the truck every trip to take food to the old folks’ home near here. The relief team is going to get you out. Marin is a terrible place for Sombra Cs.”
The pills had made Austin so dizzy that he couldn’t stand to get into the cart. The couple helped him in there. It was a tight fit, his knees bunched up almost to his chest. They wedged the backpack on top of him and the woman put the stuffed bird in his hands. “Sleep if you can. Whatever you do, be quiet. There’s a hidden compartment in the relief truck. Just hunker in there and the workers will tell you when it’s safe to come out. Austin? Do you understand?” Austin mumbled.
“Those pills are kicking in,” the man said. He closed the lid.
A tiny bit of light came in through a crack. The wheels glided on wood and rattled on concrete. Austin was on a roller coaster. Going through a tunnel, gearing up for a plunge, jerking around a curve, people screaming . . .
They weren’t screaming. The couple was chatting outside to other people. Nice day. How are you? Hope the truck has a pizza inside! Sagging against the wall of the cart, Austin dozed off. He came to at the sudden rise of his roller coaster car. The man was calling, “Thanks! Fill it up. They’re hungry over there.”
A second man called, “All right, everyone, we’re just opening the boxes and dividing it up into bags. This will go faster if you form lines. If you’ve got babies or very young children, please stand by the driver’s side door. The rest of you, get on the passenger side. If the woman with the cart for the hospital shows up here today, tell her to rap on the back doors. Give us five minutes and we’ll be ready to go.”
Austin was sliding along a floor. Doors banged shut and the lid opened. Gloved hands came down for the backpack and him. In a swirl of bodies and voices and bulletproof vests, he was guided across the back of the truck and made to crouch down. A man pointed and said, “Go through there.” Austin crawled woozily through a hatch into a little room. The man stuck his head in after Austin and said, “You want some water?”
A brief moment of clarity pierced through the grogginess. “I didn’t say thank you! I didn’t say thank you to those people! They saved me.”
The guy passed in the backpack and bird, which Austin had dropped unknowingly. “I’ll tell them for you.” A disembodied hand thrust down a bottle of water, which the man passed through the hatch. “If you’ve got claustrophobia, have it some other time. You freak out in here and you’ve killed all of us. If you got to pee, drink that water and piss in the bottle. It’ll be hours that you’re in here.”
The hatch closed and left Austin in darkness. The room was big enough for him to lie down, which felt luxurious after the cart. Air came in through a vent. He used the backpack as a pillow and stretched out. The burble of voices went on and on outside. Boxes were slit open and bags rattled; people called and children cried. The next Austin knew was movement. They were driving somewhere. The hatch opened later on and a woman looked in. “You doing okay?”
“I’m okay,” Austin said. Snacks were pushed in and the hatch closed for another stop. He explored the food in the darkness, the crinkling foil holding a granola bar, wax over a tiny wheel of cheese, the slick paper wrap over a small bar of dark chocolate. It was so bitter on his tongue that tears came to his eyes. He drank his water to wash it away.
The truck moved. The pain in his side grew less dull, and the shaking of the truck was hard on him. Mercifully, he slept for some time. When he woke up, the pain was worse. He was hopeful when the truck stopped that he’d be let out and given drugs, but boxes thumped and voices called obliviously. A man was shouting, “Quick, people! The light is fading!”
“Fuel it up!”
“Are those boxes ours or meant for Santa Rosa North?”
“No, half of those are yours, half are Vallejo East! Santa Rosa’s been in and out already.”
When the truck roared to life, the hatch opened and a guy peeked in. “Still alive?”
“It hurts,” Austin whispered about his side. He was given three over-the-counter painkillers and shut up in the room. The voices had changed. Now mostly male, they rumbled from the back.
The truck drove for a very long time, the pills soaking up only a little of the pain. The rest of it washed through him, licking up his sides and spilling back to his center. He sank down smaller and smaller within it, disentangling himself from his body piece by piece, fading away . . .
Then he was on a stretcher under the stars.
. . . increasingly non-responsive . . . can you hear me . . . Sombra C Ward . . . you’ll be okay, man . . . hold on . . . the surgeon . . . get the surgeon, GSW to the . . .
A mask was put over his face and he breathed in a hissing snake. It bit him and the venom knocked him out.
He woke up in a hospital bed. A long red line was painted on the wall. A man with short black hair was in the bed to his left, awake and paging through a book. His leg was hiked up in a cast. A second man was sleeping in the bed to Austin’s right. Three more beds were along the other side of the room. Austin stared at the red line, trying to place this hospital in his memory. The man with the book said, “It’s so no one forgets this is the Sombra C Ward. Did you forget?”
“I didn’t forget,” Austin said.
“Me neither. No one ever forgets, but they think we do. Red stripe in our barracks, red stripe in our chow hall, even though we’re the only ones in those places.”
Fans rattled from the bedside tables, but it was still warm in the room. Sliding up awkwardly, Austin backed into his pillow. “You don’t have a stamp.”
“No, they can’t give those to us. They give us red necklaces to wear.” He lifted his necklace to show it off. “I never really cared for red. So, I’ve been swinging for your clipboard, but I can’t reach it. Are you a civilian?”
Austin wasn’t sure what he was talking about. The guy laughed. “You’re a civilian. I thought you were.”
“What’s going on? I don’t remember coming here.”
“You were probably unconscious. I know you had a surgery. The nurse said you’d lost a lot of blood, but the internal damage wasn’t too bad. They thought it was going to be a lot worse. Then a bunch of wounded came in and she had to go.”
His sid
e felt sore, but it wasn’t stabbing. The pale blue gown he had on was made of flimsy fabric. An IV tree had tubes hanging down, one of which was running into his arm. He had vague memories of waking up in this room at other times and different nurses helping him to the bathroom.
The guy put his book on the bedside table between them. “I ate a bullet, too. Right below the knee. Fucking fofs . . . Shepherds, I mean. I don’t know where they keep coming from.”
“What do you mean?”
“They just keep appearing. My dad and my uncles work in pest control. Family business. For every rat you see, there are ten you didn’t. Shepherds are like that. At least most of them can’t aim for shit.” He motioned ruefully to his knee, evidence that a few could aim just fine.
“Where am I?” Austin asked.
“Arquin. It’s an old Coast Guard training center. They moved to a bigger facility not that long ago. So, you’re Austin, right? I asked you once and I was pretty sure that was the name you muttered at me.”
Arquin. That wasn’t possible. Austin threw off his blanket and swung his legs to the floor. In a plastic bag under his bed were his backpack and the Pocket Animal. Staggering to the foot of his bed and bringing the IV tree along, he looked out the window at the end of the room. He was too far away to see much out of it. A breeze along his backside told him that the hospital gown didn’t close. Pinching it shut, he lurched along and used the foot rail for balance. But he also had to hold the IV tree, so he gave up on the gown. The floor was warm under his feet.
When he got to the window, he stared down from the second story of the building he was in. Several other two-story buildings stretched away on lawns of dead grass. Soldiers were walking among them. A truck drove into the grounds and slowed, more soldiers spilling out of the back before it came to a full stop.
Austin staggered back to his bed and pressed on to the door. When he opened it, an elderly nurse with a 14% stamp looked up from a desk. The red stripe was behind her head on the wall. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“Did they make it? Did my friends make it?” Austin asked desperately. “We were all trying to get here for Zyllevir. Can we get Zyllevir here?”
“Yeah, you can!” yelled the guy from the room.
Going to the desk, Austin said to the nurse, “We got separated on Mount Tamalpais by hunters and ferals. Corbin, he’s Asian, and Zaley, she’s white and has long reddish-blonde hair. Micah? Is Micah here?” He was speaking so quickly that the nurse couldn’t answer. “You can’t miss Micah. She’s got fading blue dye in her hair and she has our baby son with her. Have you seen them?”
“I’m sorry. I haven’t,” the nurse said.
He was the only one. That was beyond comprehension. If a couple of days had passed since Austin had been brought to Arquin, and another one since they were separated, how had they not gotten here by now? The trails made it take so much longer, but he still hadn’t expected to be the only one to reach the base.
His brain refused to accept it. “Wait. You must see lots of people. I have a picture.” Holding onto the IV tree, he rushed to his bed. The nurse came in as he knelt down for the bag with his backpack. Snatching out the Polaroid photo, he said, “This is Micah and Mars. I don’t have any pictures of Corbin or Zaley.”
When he thrust it out, she examined it and then said, “I’ll remember their faces. I promise. If they’re brought in, I will let you know. Now get into bed.” She fixed the corner of the picture under the fan on the bedside table so it wouldn’t blow away.
“I’m the only one?” Austin asked. “Could they be here and you just don’t know? It looks like a big place. Would they be let in if they weren’t injured but have Sombra C? What happens to people like that?”
“The guards at the gate let in everyone who has Sombra C, or fears that they have become infected and need to be tested. They’re patted down for weapons and go to a holding area. You needed immediate medical treatment, so you were brought to the Sombra C hospital wing.” The nurse pushed his IV tree to the wall and fixed his blanket. “We check them over, give tests, and take the people who are positive to the Sonoma harbor. You’ll be taken there soon.”
“No, I can’t be! They’re all coming here. Can you check to see if anyone has come today? Corbin, Zaley, Micah, and Mars. Please.”
A machine beeped over another bed and the nurse glanced at it. “I will check, but as of this morning, no one by those names or physical descriptions has showed up at the gate. The group to leave for the Sonoma harbor two days ago only had three older men.”
This was Arquin, and only Austin was within it. Stunned, he watched her check over the sleeping man. The chatty one had closed his eyes. Austin thought about the maps and the distance, the unmarked trails and surprise trails and trails that had been wiped out.
They weren’t coming on the straight shot of the freeway. They were climbing hills on weaving paths, hiding from hunters and avoiding ferals. That had slowed them down considerably when they were all together; nothing had changed with Austin apart. There was a chance they were closing in on the gate this very second, or would be getting here tomorrow. He was just the first one to arrive, not the first and only one to ever make it here.
If they didn’t show . . . how was he to look for them? He had to get copies of those maps that Zaley had, think as she did about which paths were good, guess where hunters would be too numerous for her to guide them through. There had to be some way for Austin to find them, should they not come to Arquin, but the way eluded him. The only matter of which he was certain was that he wasn’t going to be moved to the harbor. He wasn’t going there alone. Even if the base kicked him out for refusing, he’d live nearby so he could watch for them. High in a tree, to give him a view.
The room was so quiet that he couldn’t stand it. Everyone else should be upset about it, too. Pressing copies of the picture to the walls, organizing search parties, shouting for sniffer dogs . . . This was such an emergency, but only to him. The rest of the world went on indifferently. It didn’t care what had happened to his family.
The nurse gave him medication that made him very tired. He said, “I want . . . to show the guards . . . at the gate. So they know . . . who to look for.” His eyes slid to the picture. “Do you remember their names?”
“Corbin and Zaley, Micah and Mars,” the nurse said, her manner brusque, her actions crisp, but her eyes sympathetic. “Keep the picture. I’ll pass the information along. I’ve done that for others.”
“I love them,” Austin whispered.
“Then hope for them, Austin. Hope for the best. That’s all you can do for now.”
She went away, and he hoped.
END OF VOLUME FIVE
THE ZOMBIES: VOLUME SIX
by Macaulay C. Hunter
Set Sixteen
Zaley
They traveled at night.
Furtive movements, watchful eyes. Closed mouths, hushed breaths. Rubble cracked and scratched under their feet as they passed through blocks of gutted buildings. Zaley had never before listened so hard or so keenly, taking apart every sound for its distance and threat level. Even the wind was dangerous for the sounds it could be muting, and the crickets for what their chirping subsumed.
“Lions and tigers and bears,” Corbin whispered when they started out at each fall of darkness. Except for the two of them, it was Shepherds and zombies and militias, wild dogs and thieves and fire. Zaley couldn’t shake the feeling that every step she took was carrying her closer to death. Of all the ways to die, she didn’t know which was the worst.
They hadn’t known if it was safer to travel by day or night, and selected night because if there was a need to hide, it was easier to do then. Zaley had sprained her ankle badly on the mountain, and that made it hard to outrun anything. Although it was healing, she’d turned it out on the uneven ground and after that wrapped it so tightly she could barely flex.
Traveling at night also meant they were less thirsty; most of the days were b
oiling hot and brutal with summer. Some places they stayed in to wait out the light and heat had running water, for which they were slavishly thankful. They didn’t trust it was clean, but usually didn’t have the means to boil it. Every swallow was full of risk now. Nothing could be counted on, from seemingly clean water out of a sink to silence. In their day-by-day shelters, they took turns keeping watch as the other was sleeping. It only took a second for something to go wrong, and they didn’t want to be caught off-guard. Zaley was always acutely aware of Corbin’s location, as he was of hers.
Everywhere they crept through in the nights was a war zone. The only difference was the degree to which it was destroyed. The world had shattered into chunks of rock and shards of glass, looted stores and burned homes, dead streetlights and downed power lines. Sometimes they covered several miles through it at a stretch. Other times, they made one mile at best. It depended on what lay in wait for them, and they had no way to guess ahead of time.
They stayed near the freeway to use it as a guide, but every step of the terrain was full of danger. Lights on the roads at night were never assumed to be a good thing, so they hid at every one and waited for them to douse. Voices earned the same reaction. The number of ferals was horrifying. They were all over the place, roving city streets as its mindless residents, beating and chasing each other, feeding from the dead and even the living, growling at challengers for the meat. That also stopped them in their tracks on many occasions. Corbin had killed two with his bow in one night, both having charged out of the darkness and drawn by the flashlights. Zaley only ever pointed hers at the ground a little ahead of her feet, but to those ferals, it made no difference. Without Zyllevir readily available, the country was Sombra C’s playground. And it was playing hard.
Corbin had shot a third person, but from the looks of that one, the man didn’t have Sombra C. The night after the two zombies attacked, the guy just spilled out of a building with a knife. Stopping in front of Zaley, he waved it menacingly and demanded everything she had. He had been about to demand something else when Corbin spun around and shot him in the upper back with an arrow. The guy fell, whimpering and crawling into an alley before collapsing. Zaley helped herself to his knife. She already carried a big stick for wild dogs (some of whom wore collars) yet she wasn’t going to turn down a blade, even one going dull. Maybe the guy had just been hungry, but it was irrelevant. He hadn’t approached her in a friendly way, and that gave them no choice but violence.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 146
