by Rand, Thonas
“Then we leave tomorrow before lunch,” Ardent said.
“No, we leave in the morning at dawn,” John told them.
“Agreed,” Ardent said.
“We haven’t talked about what’s gonna happen when I drive the truck with the boat out the gate,” Tom said.
“What’s there to talk about?” Derek asked.
“Well, I’m gonna need everyone that’s in the boat to cover me while I’m driving.”
“That’s a given, Tom; don’t worry, you’ll be covered,” Ardent told him.
“I know you’ll cover me, but I’m just concerned about when I’m turning the truck around to put the boat in the water,” Tom said.
“What do you mean ‘turn the truck around?’” Ardent asked.
“So I can back the boat into the water.”
“No, no, no, you’re not gonna back the boat into the water, Tom,” Bear told him.
“I don’t understand,” said Tom.
“What do you think, the cannibals are gonna let you turn around and then guide you in?” John told him sarcastically.
“No, I don’t think that.”
“You have to drive your truck straight into the water,” John told him. “It’s the only way.”
“Into the water?”
“Yeah, as fast as you can, to make sure the boat gets in deep enough to float once we release it from the trailer,” Bear said.
“Okay.”
The rest of the group was emerging from the hospital to join them.
“All right then; let’s get the truck moved,” Ardent said.
“I’m not looking forward to this,” Derek complained.
Milla teased him, “Aw, poor baby afraid of a little hard work?”
“Yes, you know that,” he answered genuinely.
They assembled at Tom’s big rig Mac truck, and it was massive. Ceraulo wasn’t there, of course, and neither was Corina. Anthony was behind the wheel and the rest of them were behind the truck in positions to push it. “Everyone ready?” Tom said.
“No, but let’s get it over with,” Alan growled.
“Yeah, let’s go,” Bear said.
“Okay, on three,” Tom instructed. “One, two, three. Push!”
They pushed against the behemoth and instantly felt the ten tons of the truck; their feet dug into the ground as they gave it everything they had. Finally, the silent metal beast began to inch forward, very slowly, but it moved. Little by little, they pushed the truck to the north side of the hospital and down the side of the building to the back. Once they passed the gate in the center of the building, Joe closed and locked it, and then went back to help with the truck again.
They pushed the truck to the front of the boat.
“Okay, stop it right here,” Tom said.
Anthony applied the brakes.
Tom told them, “Let’s push it back toward the trailer.”
The group switched positions from the rear to the front to push the truck.
“Alright, one, two, three. Push!” Tom said loudly.
They pushed as hard as they could, but they were tired and the truck didn’t move.
“Come on!” Ardent said. “Put your backs into it!”
They gave it more than they had left, and then the truck began to move; they lined up the back of the truck with the trailer hitch. Finally, they moved it into position and they were done.
“Stop! Right there!” Tom said.
“That is one heavy mother!” Bear said.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Tom answered.
Anthony jumped out of the driver’s seat, “That wasn’t so bad,” he said smiling.
Lauren wiped the sweat off her forehead, “Funny guy.”
Falling on his ass, Derek said, “Jesus, I need a beer!”
“You and me, both,” Milla said as she sat next to him.
“Aw, poor baby tired from a little hard work, huh?” Derek mocked her with a smile.
“No pussy for you tonight,” she said.
“I’m too tired, anyway,” he said.
She grabbed his crotch, “Oh, really?”
“Well, not that tired,” he grinned sheepishly.
“Get a room,” Bear told them.
“We have a bathroom,” Derek answered.
“Hey, Maggie, where’s Corina?” Milla asked.
“She’s not feeling well, so she’s lying down,” Maggie said to her. “I think she’s coming down with a cold or something.”
“Aw, poor thing, I hope she gets better soon,” Milla said.
“Thanks,” Maggie answered.
“So when are we leaving?” Alan asked.
“Not soon enough,” Donnie said.
“In the morning, at dawn,” Ardent said to everyone. “So after dinner tonight, get plenty of rest.”
“I’m making something special for our last night here,” Tom told everyone.
“Let me guess…beef stew?” Joe said.
“Yeah, but I make it good.”
“No argument there, but I’ve had it like a hundred and seventeen times,” Anthony moaned.
“Be quiet or you can eat MREs,” Tom threatened him.
“Beef stew it is!” Anthony cheered.
“So everything is loaded on the boat?” Ardent asked.
“It’s loaded to capacity, any more and it will sink when it hits the water,” Tom said.
“You factored in the weight of us, too?” Bear asked.
“Of course.”
“Good,” Ardent said. “Then we’re ready.”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Bear said.
“That’s not ready enough,” John said.
“Hopefully it will be,” said Lauren.
“Remember, Tom, when you start the truck engine in the morning, it’s gonna attract all of those things to the back,” John said, “so five seconds later and we go through the gate.”
“Got it,” Tom answered. “What if someone is left behind after I start the truck?”
“You leave,” John told him.
“Really?”
“Yes, leave, Tom,” Ardent said. “We can’t risk the entire group for one person.”
“What if it’s more than one person?” Tom asked.
“Leave,” John said sternly.
“Okay.”
“Let’s put our gear onboard the boat, Bear,” Ardent said.
“Alright.”
“See you all at dinner,” Ardent said and left with Bear.
Tom walked away to check on his truck and everyone else went about his or her business.
John went to the back of the lot to check on the grenade launcher.
“John?” Lauren called to him.
He stopped. “Yeah?”
“Did you mean that about leaving someone behind?” She said. “What if it were me?”
He thought about what to say and then walked up to her so no one else would hear because he was agitated. “What do you want me to say to that, lady, huh? That, ‘No, I wouldn’t leave you behind, a gentlemen wouldn’t do that, Lauren.’ Is that what you wanna hear?”
His callousness stung, and Lauren felt her eyes burn, but she held her tears; she wouldn’t let him or anyone else see her cry again. “If that’s what you wanna say, as wicked as it is, then fine. I’ll take it.”
“Jesus,” John muttered. “Well, that’s too bad, because it’s not happening. You want a truthful answer? Don’t be late for the boat.”
And he walked away, leaving her behind.
The sun drew its last breaths…
• • •
Later and after the sun had set, they were all in the cafeteria for dinner.
Anthony was finishing up his bowl of stew and decided to tease his brother, “Man! This is the finest beef stew that I have ever had!”
“Shut up,” Tom told him.
Anthony shoved some more spoonfuls into his mouth and moaned with satisfaction. “Damn! This is some good stew! Is this stuff imported, or did you make it yo
urself?”
“You’re an ass clown,” Tom smirked.
“Yes, I am,” Anthony said.
“All jokes aside,” Ardent said, “this is really good stew. Thank you, Tom.”
“My pleasure.”
“Yeah, thank you,” Bear said.
The rest of Ardent’s crew thanked Tom and John gave him a thumb up.
“Now that most of you have finished dinner…” Ardent said. “We need to discuss something.”
“Ceraulo,” Maggie said.
“Yes,” Ardent confirmed.
“What do we do with him?” Joe pondered.
“I say we leave the crazy sonuvabitch here,” Donnie said.
“I’m leaning in that direction, too,” Alan concurred.
“No argument from me,” Bear added.
“He’s a monster, but we wouldn’t be any different if we left him and all of them to die here,” Maggie said.
“We can’t take all of them with us,” Tom told her.
“Obviously not, but we can’t leave them to die, either,” she stated.
“So what’re you saying, Maggie, is that we put them all out of their misery?” Milla said.
“I think it’s the moral choice,” Maggie answered.
“There’s nothing moral about this,” Lauren said. “But it’s the only choice we have.”
“And what about Ceraulo?” Derek asked. “Do we kill him, too? Because I say we do.”
“Ceraulo isn’t a murderer,” Ardent said. “He did what he thought was the right choice at a bad time.”
“The right choice?” Joe said. “To leave those poor bastards locked in their cells full of their own filth and watch them die one by one, how is that right?”
“He could have just abandoned them, everyone else left, but he stayed and tried to take care of them, and he fed them,” Ardent argued.
“He fed them because his son was one of them,” Donnie said.
“He could have put his son in another part of the hospital and left all of them to die, but he didn’t,” Ardent told them.
“So what do you want us to do, Ardent?” Tom asked.
“We give him a choice,” Ardent said. “He can either come with us or stay here and take his chances.”
“If he chooses to come with us, what about his son?” Maggie asked.
“He can bring his son with us, if he can control him,” Ardent explained. “We’ll restrain him, of course, and medicate him, if necessary.”
“That sounds too risky,” Anthony said.
“Everything is too risky nowadays,” Bear said.
“I agree with the kid,” John said. “It’s way too risky, and I’ll tell you something else—I don’t buy that story about his son. I think he’s playing us.”
“Why?” Lauren asked. “What would he have to gain by lying to us?”
“I don’t know, but he didn’t spew out the son bit until Bear was about to open that cell and kill the occupant,” John told them. “Unless his son was in that particular cell, why else would he say that but to stop Bear? And what were the chances that out of forty-seven patients Bear would pick the one cell that his son was in? I say slim.”
“We’ll just have to use caution,” Ardent said. “We’ll talk to him in the morning and give him the choice of staying or going.”
“And killing the rest of them?” Milla asked.
“Yes,” Ardent told her.
They all wondered about their decision as they talked amongst themselves and finished their dinners.
Bear walked over to Ardent and tried to speak to him in private. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to bring Ceraulo and his son?” Bear asked.
“No, it’s not a good idea,” Ardent said to him. “But you and I—we’re not murderers, even in the world’s current toilet flush. We’re naval officers, and we will act accordingly. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If his story about his son turns out to be a lie, then we take him with us, and once we’re out of the city, we’ll give him some supplies and send him on his way.”
“Okay,” Bear said.
Tom produced an unopened bottle of liquor. “I was saving this for a special occasion, since we’re leaving in the morning. I guess this is as good as a time as any.”
Bear’s face lit up. “Oh, what ya got there, Tom?”
“A hundred year old bottle of Scotch.”
“OOH WEE!” Derek howled. “I haven’t had any decent liquor since this whole shit storm started!”
“Guns and ammo aren’t the only things a doomsday prepper stocks up on,” Tom said with a smile.
“You got more of that?” Derek asked.
“Yeah, I do, but just this one bottle for tonight, we need to get up early and a hangover isn’t a good alarm clock.”
Tom cracked the bottle open, poured drinks for himself and Anthony in plastic cups, and then passed it on. The rest of the group got a drink, except for Maggie. Joe offered her some, but she refused.
Tom raised his cup, “Here’s to being alive.”
“Cheers,” Ardent said.
“Cheers,” Joe echoed.
They all raised their cups to a toast and drank.
Lauren and John met eyes and she raised her glass to him, he reluctantly raised his.
“Oh yes, cheers!” Milla said and drank. “Oh my God, this is great stuff!”
Maggie was too busy looking out the window and listening to the horde outside the wall to care about their moment of joy and then she ruined it. “Why didn’t the military use a nuclear weapon on the dead? There’s so many. Why didn’t they use it on them?” she asked whoever listened.
“We would never use a nuclear weapon on our own soil,” Bear told her.
“Not even when we’re losing the war?” Anthony asked.
“We would never use a nuclear weapon on American soil during wartime,” Ardent said.
“But this isn’t a war,” Maggie said.
“Of course it is,” Ardent assured her.
“No, it’s not,” she insisted. “We’re not fighting an invading country or terrorists, we’re fighting dead people. It’s not even a fight, we’re just hiding and hoping to live another day, another hour, before they rip us apart and eat us! This isn’t a war. This is the end of all things. So they should have used them, but it’s too late now.” She looked back out the window.
“How’s Corina doing, Maggie?” Derek asked.
Without looking at Derek, she said, “Fine, I put her to bed early.”
“She just has a cold,” Joe added.
“So if we didn’t use any nuclear weapons on the dead, then why does the sky look strange at times?” Anthony asked.
“Probably from all the fires everywhere.” Alan guessed.
“That’s what I thought, too, but the really big fires burned out a long time ago, and the sky still looks weird to me.”
“That could be from a nuclear blast,” Bear said.
“But I thought you said we wouldn’t use one on our own soil?” Anthony said.
“Not us,” Ardent clarified.
“Then who?” asked Anthony.
“As communications began to break down, we heard rumors,” Bear said.
“Who?” Joe asked. “The British? The Chinese?”
“Not them,” John said.
“The Russians,” said Ardent.
DAY 66:
THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, SAINT PETERSBURG
Current population of the Russian Federation: 145,000,000.
Current population of Saint Petersburg: 6,000,000.
The Russian night was dark and cold. The Levashovo air base was located in the outskirts northwest of Saint Petersburg. During the cold war, the base was at the height of its glory and stood proudly as a symbol of Russian military supremacy, but it had only become a rundown reminder of the way things once were. The ten-foot concrete walls around the base were splintered with long cracks and the concertina wire atop was old and rusted in ma
ny segments. The guard shacks on the wall every 200 feet were dilapidated huts framed with frosted-over windows, and the lights, along with the light posts on the wall, flickered with a teasing of impending power failure.
Part of the air base had been converted into a military graveyard, and there were many old aircraft lined up in rows, like cars at a junkyard, dismantled and gutted shells of yesteryear. Not far from the forgotten, the runways were currently in use by the living. Helicopters, both transport and attack aircraft, were landing and taking off from the base. They were in the process of emergency airlifting some several hundred evacuees from Saint Petersburg. Civilians that ran for their lives from the city infested by the undead. Ordinary citizens that barely got away with the clothes on their backs, some had suitcases, and others had bags of belongings. Many of them were wounded; many were bruised from falling or being trampled as they ran. Some had black eyes and busted lips from fights over vehicles and supplies, the usual kindness from strangers.
And many of the evacuees had other kinds of wounds—scratches, bite marks, and torn away pieces of flesh tattooed some people.
Some were minor and others were plagued with attack evidence.
That’s why the armed base personnel were separating the infected from those who weren’t. The soldiers were methodical when they spotted an infected person; they took them out of the group quickly. Some people refused to have their loved ones taken away.
“Step out of the line!” one soldier shouted to a man that had a bandaged bloody wound on his hand.
The soldier thrust the barrel of his Kalashnikov assault rifle in the man’s face, and he did what they asked. “What is the meaning of this?” the man said in fear.
The military was in complete control of all the civilians that wanted to be evacuated. The soldiers had all of them, hundreds, in six single file lines that were twenty feet apart. The lines led to an “examination area.” The front of the lines ended in an area that was illuminated with several large spotlights that made that patch of tarmac bright as day. Each person that reached the front of the line was escorted away from everyone else and as armed soldiers kept a safe distance, two other soldiers made the person strip naked, regardless of sex or age. The time for decency and respect was gone.
Once the person was completely naked, they looked at every inch of the person’s body with flashlights for any signs of wounds caused by the dead. If the person was clean, they allowed them to redress and move to the next section, which was the staging area to wait for a helicopter pick up, of which there were a couple hundred people anxiously hold-up. If they found any sign of an attack by the dead, even the lightest of scratches, then that person was immediately removed from the line and taken away—they didn’t even allow them to redress—they forced them at gunpoint to walk naked toward an aircraft hangar. After three soldiers took a person and they turned the corner behind the hangar—a gunshot cracked the air a moment later.
