Steele couldn’t help but smile. This man wore his tools with pride. FSO Kim followed Eddie eying them with calculating eyes.
“Hi there. I was wondering if you had room for me to ride with ya?” Eddie said.
“We sure do,” Steele said without hesitation. Steele had no right to refuse the man a ride, and who knew when they might need someone familiar with the mechanical arts.
“Thank you. I got some family in West Virginia, and if you head that way, which I assume you will, maybe you can drop me off.”
“We will be headed that way, west at least. We would appreciate your help. Perhaps you know something about the mobile lounge maintenance?” Steele said, impressed by the man’s insight.
“I sure do, son. I would be happy to help out,” Eddie said with a smile and a handshake.
FSO Kim could hardly wait for Eddie to move out of her way. “Agent Steele, I’m going with you.”
Steele was a bit taken back by her sudden interest in his team. “We will do our best to protect you and get you to a safe place. You have my word.”
“It’s not that. You do think quite highly of yourself, don’t you?”
His jaw dropped a bit. He was confident, but not overly optimistic in their present situation.
“Don’t bother to answer that. However, your team does seem a bit more highly trained than the security personnel down here,” she gave a rearward glance at portly Officer Jenkins. “I could never stay down here. Besides, I am sure things will be better outside the airport,” she said, flipping her hair out of her face to settle the issue.
Steele gave Mauser a sideways glance. He had a shit eating grin on his face.
“Okay. I will give you a moment to gather your belongings.”
“That won’t be necessary, I am ready.” She over talked him and gave him a hard handshake.
She smiled triumphantly. What just happened? Does she think that she is somehow in charge? It was likely she waited to jump all over him as soon as he went to make the next decision; a constant hounding until he didn’t know up from down, right from left. Feeling a few new gray hairs sprouting in anticipation, he took a deep breath. If the infected didn’t kill him, surely she would.
The path he led them down most certainly meant death, but he had no choice. He couldn’t sit back and wait knowing Gwen was still out there. If they wanted to follow him through hell, so be it. None of these people had to come with him; this was all voluntary. Regardless, the burden of responsibility weighed down on his shoulders like an Atlas stone.
GWEN
Fairfax, VA
Lindsay allowed the Jeep to roll to a stop, its brakes grating slightly. Please don’t attract any of them. A green sign read Bircham Rd. Gwen squinted at a mangled mess of cars crowding the intersection. It looked as though the accident had started with a minor fender bender, but had extended outward as other cars had tried to drive around and became entangled with each other.
An SUV had wrapped itself around an oak tree. Its hood scrunched up like an inchworm, and the windshield spiderwebbed. Pieces of wreckage lay strewn about. The driver flailed inside pressed up against an inflated air bag. Struggle as he might, he couldn’t extract himself. Gwen’s first instinct was to rush over and help, but a large tree branch emerging from the center of the man’s chest revealed he was one of the undead. Not everything that moved was alive.
Another road blocked. “We can make it on foot. Plenty of daylight.” Jesus, it’s only a few blocks. Surely we can walk it. Her thoughts brought on a serious case of doubt.
“Those guys from the gas station are still back there,” Ahmed said, peeping out the back window.
It seemed that the more they drove around the more the dead tried to follow them. Most gave up and wandered toward easier prey, but those assholes from the gas station were persistent.
“See if there’s a way round,” she said to Lindsay, who knuckled the steering wheel. As long as we keep moving we seem to be okay.
Lindsay edged the Jeep up over a sidewalk trying to take it around the wreckage. A combination of trees and cars stopped them from going any further. Gwen simply didn’t know what to do; she had never heard of anything like this before in history.
“We’re only a few blocks from where I live. If we lay low and stay quiet, I think we can make it without running into any of those things,” she said quickly.
Gwen glanced over at Lindsay, who visibly blanched. Ahmed didn’t say a word. “Guys, we have food and guns at my house, so we’ll be safe. We can’t drive around forever, because those people keep chasing us. We need a safe place to hide. We can leave the Jeep here, and if we can’t make it through we can circle our way back and get out of here.”
Over her shoulder, she peered at Ahmed, who had an odd look in his eye. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
He flashed a smile. “I’m in. We should move fast though, before those guys catch up,” he said with cautious glance over his shoulder.
Lindsay scowled blowing hair out of her face.
“Lindsay, please. We’ll be safer. I promise.” I have no idea if it will be safer.
“I don’t want to go out there with those monsters. I’ve seen what they do to you. We should stay in the car.” Tears welled in Lindsay’s eyes.
Trying to comfort, Gwen rubbed Lindsay’s shoulder. It was tense, a fearful knot of anxiety. Time to put some of her psychology classes from college to work. All those student loans had to pay off at some point.
“You can stay here, but I think we’d be better off together. You know, watch each other’s backs, right? Just like the Metro. We’re a great team. Ahmed and I need you, and you need us.”
Ahmed caught on. “I agree. Let’s stick together. We’ll come right back if it’s too dangerous,” he said, leaning in from the backseat in between the women.
She would never have let Lindsay stay there by herself, but it would be better if she could persuade her to want to go.
“I can’t fight,” Lindsay muttered.
Gwen half smiled. “Ahmed and I will protect you. I promise.” I will try, she thought, will that even be good enough?
“That’s right. None of them will even get close,” Ahmed reaffirmed, showing her is baseball bat.
After a minute of silence, Lindsay sniffled. “Okay. But if it gets scary, I’m coming back to the car,” she said.
“We all will,” Gwen assured her.
They exited the vehicle and quietly closed the doors, trying not to make a sound. The three of them trudged their way down the street toward the cul-de-sac that held her townhouse. Every row was broken up into six townhouse blocks along each side of the street. The houses had been built during the eighties, and each had two stories. They were quiet, quaint and secluded, each with a small driveway. Trees ran along the backs of the houses blocking them from the main road. It could have been just a regular day in the neighborhood, or maybe a holiday weekend since only about half the cars were parked in front of their respective homes.
The group stalked down the middle of the street. A minivan sat running in a driveway, the doors open, blood dripping from the door handle into a widening pool on the ground. They passed holding their breath, not daring to peek in. Gwen led the way, their little party huddling together for safety. Ahmed held his baseball bat close to his chest. They made a desperate party. If anyone had noticed them from the townhouses, they weren’t letting on.
Three houses away from Gwen’s, Ahmed touched her on the shoulder and pointed ahead with his baseball bat. They scrambled behind a parked crossover and squatted down. Lindsay’s teeth rattled.
“What is it?” Lindsay whispered.
Gwen peered out from behind the car. Two cartoon clad small children were outside. It was Timmy and Jessica, Gwen’s next-door neighbors, aged nine and ten. Please let them be okay.
She watched them closely. They seemed to be dancing around something on the ground straw colored ringleted hair bouncing on their shoulders. Every few moment
s they would release a high-pitched mewing. Are they crying? Are they hurt? They bent down tugging on a form on the ground. They must need help. If I can’t bring myself to help the most vulnerable in society, who am I? I have a responsibility to aid them.
She stood up, hesitantly, brushing dirt off her suit. Better to not resemble one of the infected if they need our help. Ahmed caught her by the sleeve, pulling her back down with an iron grip.
“What’s your problem?” she asked, shaking his hand free.
His dark eyes bore into hers like black drills. Holding her gaze he mouthed, “No.” What has gotten into him?
“They’re children, for God’s sake,” she whispered.
Ahmed closed his eyes slowly. “Not any more,” he breathed.
That can’t be. She looked back at the children scrutinizing them.
They dug relentlessly at something on the ground. Gwen realized they weren’t crying for help; they were eating. Blood covered their little hands, faces and their pajamas, as though they had turned while taking a nap. The outline of a yellow-haired corpse lay motionless. That must be Jill.
Gwen’s heart dropped. She had babysat them on various occasions when their parents enjoyed a night out on the town. She wondered if their father Henry was around. He worked at the Pentagon as a defense contractor, so maybe he was still alive.
If they didn’t want to address the issue of infected children, which Gwen didn’t know if she had the stomach to do, they would have to find another way. Gwen shuddered at the thought.
It would take an extra few minutes, but they could make their way around the back of the house and go in through the basement. “We’ve got to go around,” she said in hushed tones.
Both Ahmed and Lindsay acknowledged her with a nod.
The infected children didn’t look up from their gore-splattered feast as the trio backtracked to the other side of the street. They hugged the backyard fences until Gwen came upon one that was familiar. Each wooden fence came up to eight feet, providing reasonable privacy from the outside.
Gwen unlatched the gate, as quiet as possible, and they went inside. Her hand shook as she closed the fence. Taking a moment to relax, her heartbeat slowed down a little. We are on the home stretch.
Their feet crunched through a section of brown grass that Mauser had killed in a weed eradication project gone wrong. In utter contrast, an attractive garden sat on either side of the yard, filled with perennials that covered the fence, while a beautiful hydrangea bush grew in the corner. A sliding glass door led to Mauser’s room in the basement.
Whew. She sighed a breath of relief. We made it. Gwen tugged at the sliding door. Nothing moved. She pulled at it again. This time it moved slightly, but only enough to let her know it was locked.
At that moment, they heard the footsteps and the moans. The rustling movement of a mass of people approaching their direction in haste. Thump. Lindsay shrieked covering her mouth. The whole fence shuddered on impact.
“How did they find us?” Lindsay mouthed. Ahmed looked panicked, but he immediately took up a wide stance facing backward.
“Gwen, we need to get inside now,” he called over his shoulder.
The moaning of more infected echoed off the backs of the townhouses. The wood bent inwards as another body fell into the fence. Gwen felt frantically for her purse. No purse hung in its normal place by her side. I must have lost it when I fell.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” she said, trying to remember where they had hidden the spare key. She wildly flipped over rocks in the garden. It had to be under one of these things.
The fence rattled as they tried to breach it.
“I don’t have a key,” she screamed at Ahmed.
“Hurry Gwen,” he hissed.
Dirt caked her fingers as she clawed the black garden earth in a desperate effort to find the key. Fuck it. She wrapped her fingers around a softball-sized rock and chucked it through the middle of the sliding door. The glass bursted inward. Mauser would understand.
They hurried inside as the fence gave way under the weight of the bodies. The infected toppled over each other, becoming an entangled mess of limbs.
Gwen ran straight into the laundry room and grabbed Steele’s Mossberg 500 breach barrel shotgun that he kept slung on a rack. She grabbed the gun, pumping it quickly to ensure that it was loaded.
She faced the disfigured, walking corpses of her neighbors as they staggered into the basement. Janine from across the street didn’t even flinch as her sleeve caught on the broken glass, cutting right through the flesh and muscle of her arm. More blood-covered bodies marched inside the fence with dead white stares and gaping open mouths.
“Lindsay, there’s a revolver in that case over there,” she hollered, before taking up a firing stance, wide but not too wide, and prepared to unleash a barrage of gunfire in the direction of the unwanted newcomers.
Pulling the trigger, she pointed the shotgun at the assailants without using the single bead sight. A slug to the chest put down what was once their nosey neighbor, Mr. Wilson. His face had been gnawed at, exposing his jawbone and teeth. She reloaded by pumping the handgrip up and down. Boom. Another police slug hit what remained of Mrs. Andrews in the face, effectively halting her forward progress. She was missing an arm and looked almost comical with her hair still in curlers. Won’t need to worry about her seventies hairdo now.
Gwen jerked the trigger and took off an infected jogger’s leg collapsing the man. He crawled toward her, his leg a bony, sinewy mess of tendon and flesh. Janine reached for Gwen swiping red fingernails inches from her face, a gaping hole in her chest. Gwen rotated her hips, thrusting the gun like a spear into Janine’s skull. A sickening crack rewarded Gwen as the breach barrel punched through Janine’s head like parchment paper. Janine toppled downward, the hole where Gwen had rammed her filling with blood. She doubted that was the barrel’s intended purpose, but it had done the trick. Janine didn’t get up again.
Gwen was thankful Mark had taken her to the range and let her shoot the shotgun before, otherwise the sound and recoil might have surprised her out of shooting it more than once. The sound was deafening and the recoil kicked her shoulder like a mule. Fire erupted from the front of the serrated barrel each time she shot. She kept firing until she ran out of ammo.
All the infected were down and chalky gun smoke had taken their place. Lindsay crouched in the corner covering her ears.
Ahmed walked over to Mr. Wilson, who was beginning to sit up despite his shredded upper torso. He hammered his skull with an overhead swing. Ahmed dispatched the jogger and several others with the same technique, which seemed to do the trick. Gwen’s neighbors failed to rise again.
When he had finished, he gave Gwen a quick smile. “Damn, girl, you just rocked those things.”
She smiled back, her adrenaline levels beginning to drop and the relief of surviving the encounter ebbing through her. “You should see me Bachata,” she said, sweeping her hair out of her face.
Ahmed pierced her with his dark eyes. She ignored him and reached down to grab a handful of shotgun shells. One by one she slid them into the bottom of the gun.
JOSEPH
Mount Eden Emergency Operations Facility, VA
Joseph strolled to the elevators hands in his pockets. The Bottomside of Mount Eden was a dry and claustrophobic dungeon that Joseph called home. The bunker had been built in the late sixties as a fallout shelter for the President and Congress in case of a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union. It could hold over a thousand people for six months without Topside support. Underground reservoirs, ventilation and air recirculation systems ensured the compound’s self-sufficiency. And Joseph actively sought to leave the protective labyrinth. He needed a breath of fresh air after his meeting with the Special Committee.
A soldier in full combat gear waved him into the elevator, which shuddered as it sped to the surface. Joseph stepped out into a foyer, which could have been the lobby of a office building or hotel except for the two-foot-
thick steel doors encasing the entrance to the elevator.
The faint sound of helicopters thundered as they flew back and forth from supply runs or combat missions into Northern Virginia. The high and tight held up a hand making him wait.
“Private, front and center.” A young military man hustled forward tucking in his shirt, helmet in hand.
“You are on escort duty.” The young soldier’s eyes dropped as if he were being punished.
“Do I really need an escort?” Joseph inquired.
The older grizzled soldier hardly batted an eye at Joseph.
“Orders are orders. You go outside. You get an escort.” Was there no privacy in this place?
The young soldier followed him outside, casually holding his rifle downward. The bright sun blinded Joseph, and he shaded his eyes. It wasn’t too hot, but it wasn’t cool either, a perfect end of the summer weather.
Joseph had never been aware that Mount Eden even existed. Trying to hide such a huge facility on top of a thickly wooded mountain seemed silly to him. Very supervillainesque, with a boring government twist, plain white and gray warehouse style buildings covered the mountaintop.
“Do you know anything about this place?” Joseph asked his shadow guard.
“Never been here in my life ‘til now, but Sarge said this is some sort of ‘go-to’ facility for FEMA and other Feds if their D.C. facilities were ever compromised.”
Our current predicament is a little worse than compromised.
“Do you mind?” the soldier asked, lighting a cigarette. Joseph didn’t respond. The soldier spoke out the side of his mouth, the other holding his cigarette in place. “I guess there’s a bunch of underground facilities in the Washington area that hold government agencies so they can still operate in the case of a disaster.” Joseph nodded. He had seen a show on television about it.
“They call it continuity of government, but they don’t tell me shit. Just go here, hump there, and shoot them. We got a brigade of the 82nd Airborne flown in, the 12th Aviation Battalion and stragglers from the 3rd Infantry. The Old Guard had a rough time of it being so close to the city and tasked with bringing out all those officials.”
End Time Page 25
