She figured that made sense, but knew she'd sure feel better breezing down the road away from danger. Of course, there weren't enough bikes for all of them. A quick evacuation might cause a life or death squabble over who got a seat. Cheryl knew her group wouldn't have a chance. These Vultures were the type who'd protect their Harley-Davidsons with their lives—there was no way anyone was going to wrestle the handlebars away from them.
As the minutes dragged on, the stagnant, windless air grew increasingly hot. Their sweaty fingers poised on their guns and crossbow triggers, scanning the area in a full circle around them for any sign of movement.
"How long do you figure it would take them to get here at the rate they were moving?" Aidan asked Chip.
"I'd say about twenty minutes to half an hour, the same as it took us to get down there this morning."
They continued to wait. Thirty minutes…then forty five passed. There were no sounds of movement in the forest around them. After an hour, they began to grow restless.
Mark looked accusingly at Cheryl and Chip. "How many did you say you saw?"
"Dozens," she replied. "They turned our way, sniffed the air, and started heading up. If they'd stayed on that trajectory, they should have been here by now."
Ben teased Chip. "Did you both pick some mushrooms while you were out there? Maybe you were hallucinating."
"You calling me a damn liar? We know what we saw. There were a hundred skanky corpses headed up the mountain! You don't believe me? You hike down that way and look for yourself."
Ben seemed to mull that idea over.
"I'll go with you," Diego said.
"Me too," Zach said, ignoring Diego's glare.
Ben couldn't back down then, so the three of them scrambled down from their perches.
"You be careful!" Aidan shouted after them. "Don't try to be heroes. Run back if you even see one of them."
Diego gave him a salute and they took off, heading towards the road.
Twenty minutes later, the campers were still perched in the trees, waiting for the attack that never came...and waiting for the men to return safely.
"How did we dodge that bullet?" Edmond asked. "Obviously, those Eaters weren't coming here."
"Maybe they ran into some of our traps," one of the Vultures offered.
"We don't have enough traps to snare a hundred of them coming at once," the one to his right said.
Aidan glumly said, "We'll have to break camp. They know we're here."
"How do you know that?" Jake asked him, looking nervous for the first time. "Maybe it was random. Maybe—"
"Releasing Eaters…right in this area? They sent the dogs. They were searching for us. Luckily, there was no downwind to give us away, so they must have called them off."
"Called them off?" Cheryl asked. "How is that poss—"
"I told you. They control them. I don't know how."
Cheryl thought back to the very first day of the epidemic in her town. When she'd hidden in a shop with Mark and a bunch of other people, she'd looked out the window and seen a group of Eaters gathering in the park across the street. They were huddled together like a pack. It wasn't proof of any remaining brain function, but it did point to the possibility that there was still some sort of group think going on, and maybe O.N.E. had figured out how to harness that.
Aidan was still talking about packing up and moving out when Diego burst back into the camp. Everyone stared down at him, waiting for him to catch his breath.
"It's the weirdest thing!" Diego said. "There are corpses everywhere down by the road. Looks like they were headed up towards us, but they just keeled over. They all have one of these sticking in the back of their heads." With a gloved hand, he held up a thin black box about the size of a business card.
Aidan's eyes went wide. "What the hell is that?"
"It looks like a transmitter of some sort," Mark said.
"Clean it up, and we'll have a better look at it."
After Diego left, Zach and Ben showed up. Both weren't happy that Diego had run ahead of them and spilled the news without them.
"I almost went a round with your bigmouthed donkey. He doesn't know when to lay off."
Zach's complaint was directed to Aidan who didn't bother to reply. Cheryl couldn't blame him. He had better things to do than referee the scuffles of grown men who were acting like school boys.
Diego came back a few minutes later. As he handed the device to Aidan, Cheryl got a whiff of bleach emanating from it and knew they must have a bottle stashed somewhere that they rationed.
Aidan turned the box over, revealing a circular attachment with a wire sticking out and an array of fat needles. "This looks like some sort of electrode and injection device."
"Looks like O.N.E.'s Dr. Frankenstein has been busy in the workshop," Diego said.
Earl started giggling uncontrollably.
Edmond flashed him a look of scorn. "What is so bloody funny?"
"Man…what I wouldn't give to have my own remote-controlled zombie! That's a hoot."
No one else seemed to see any humor in the idea. They all looked frightened.
Examining the box, Aidan said, "Maybe this was some sort of test. They let them loose then went on down the road a ways to see if they could exterminate them with the push of a button." After a little more tinkering, he pulled the box apart and stared at its innards. "Actually, this thing is pretty ingenious."
They all hunched over, trying to get a better look.
"See this empty vial?" He pointed to a tiny glass tube next to the circuit board. If I had to guess, I'd say it contained some sort of paralysis agent, something that instantly impairs motor function combined with another agent that destroys brain tissue."
"So like…a failsafe…in case the electrode doesn't work to control them."
"Exactly."
Jasmine moaned. "I really don't like this."
"Me either," Cheryl said. "How can we expect to defend ourselves against something like this? It's madness."
As they quibbled about what their next plan of action should be, Zach reminded them of something. "Does this really change anything? They're still just walking dead meat. So what if some group of dickheads is controlling them now? We can still kill them just the same as before—a shot to the head, a rock to the skull…that hasn't changed."
"That's true," Aidan replied. "Maybe we're better off staying put. We know this area pretty well and that gives us a strategic advantage."
Chip bounced on the heels of his boots, anxiously waiting for a turn to speak. "But what about the bodies? The smell of those rotting corpses just sitting by the road could lure more in—more than we could handle."
Aidan shook his head. "I think they're far enough away from our camp to cause trouble. They actually might work as a diversion."
Agitation increased all around as everyone squabbled about what they should do next. Mark and Jake were ready to leave, both insisting they needed to head north to get away from this new threat. Aidan agreed that they needed to leave at some point, but thought they should head east, deeper into the mountains. The arguments grew loud enough that Diego finally stood up and reminded them all that their voices might be carrying on the wind and reaching the ears of Eaters in the area or O.N.E. patrols.
"All right…let's just stop!" Aidan said. "We're letting our emotions get in the way of rational thinking."
Diego backed him up. "He's right. Maybe, we need to sleep on this for a night and have a serious discussion tomorrow. In the meantime, gather up your necessities, in case we decide to break camp."
Grumbles followed as the group slowly dispersed. Cheryl saw Jake, Mark, Ben, and Zach head off to a tent just as Deanna walked by her, shooting death rays with her eyes. Aidan and Diego were talking with hushed voices when Deanna plopped herself down. She wrapped a leg around one of Aidan's and leaned into him. When her clinging reached the point of annoyance, he flicked her off. She jumped to her feet and kicked a cloud of dirt in Cheryl's direction
before stomping off. Curious about Aidan's conversation with Diego, Cheryl wanted to join them, but feared Deanna's wrath, so she left and decided to join Mark and the others in the tent.
They glared at her when she entered, but she came in and sat down cross-legged anyway, insisting with the determinedness of her insertion that she belonged in the conversation just as much as the rest of them.
Jake was using a piece of charcoal to draw on a cardboard square. "So, we can head northwest and bypass Phoenix by skirting around the east side then pick up Highway Seventeen going north…"
"Why wouldn't we just take Seventy-seven through Globe towards the Fort Apache Reservation? That's headed more northeast towards Omaha," Mark said.
"Right," Cheryl added. "And the main highway seems like the last place we'd want to be if we're trying to avoid O.N.E. trucks."
"With a direct north route, there will be shops along the way where we might be able to pick up food, water, and other supplies. Places where we could sleep. If we travel at night and rest during the day, we'll be less likely to be seen."
No one argued with that.
"And…honestly," Jake said. "I don't have much hope that Omaha is still secure. That's a long way to go with no guarantee of safety at the other end. I'd rather head straight up towards Provo. I know a Mormon group up there that started preparing for doomsday long before the shit hit the fan. And that's a might closer than Omaha."
"You know them well enough that they'd take us in?" Ben asked.
"I'm pretty sure that if we make it there without any bites or signs of infection, they're sure to take us in."
"Okay," Mark said. "I like the idea of a closer destination. I think we should head out tonight, maybe after scavenging some supplies from the camp."
Cheryl scoffed. "We're not stealing from them! If they want to give us some food and water, maybe a couple more guns, that's fine…but only if it's offered."
"This is survival of the fittest!" Mark insisted. "The Vultures are on borrowed time if they stay here anyway. They're not going to have much need for beans, rice, or water when they're corpses."
"He's right," Jake said. "We'll be polite and ask first. If they say, 'no', then we'll take what we need."
By the time the conversation wound down, the four men were in agreement about their plans. Cheryl was torn. At the beginning of the outbreak, she would have followed Mark and his pals to the ends of the earth. Now, she wasn't so sure. If they were planning on leaving tonight, there was little time left to work it out in her mind.
Towards sunset, as she came back from filling some plastic water bottles with water from the pit, Aidan whispered to her from behind a teepee. She glanced around to see if anyone would notice her sneaking off into the shadows then joined him near the trunk of a tall pinyon.
"A little bird told me your group is leaving—at least those of you who want to go. I guess Jake's still got some fantasy that there's some place safer out there. I just tried to talk him out of it. Told him it would be a death march—if the Eaters don’t get you, the troops from O.N.E. will. He's determined, though. He asked me if we could spare some food for the road, and I told him he could have a few cans from our stash, but that's it. He seemed pretty ungrateful for the offer."
Cheryl figured Jake and the others were probably already covertly filling their pockets with deer jerky and boiled eggs.
"Look…" Aidan implored. "You and I made it all the way down here from Colorado. You know I know a thing or two about survival. There's a better chance of making it if we stick together. We're better armed. We've got—"
After glancing around to see if anyone was watching them, he reached out and pulled her close, pressing the warmth of his body into her. "You know it would be crazy dangerous to go all the way to Provo or Omaha."
She felt her heart beating against his, smelled the campfire smoke on his skin. Memories flooded her mind with everything they'd endured together.
"You don't have to go," he said, boring into her with one twinkling green eye. "You could stay here with us...with me."
Cheryl closed her eyes, trying to find some moorings on her tipsy raft.
"I found a spot deeper in the mountains that would be the perfect place to build a cabin."
A cabin. Camping out under the stars these last few nights made her nostalgic for that last night of normalcy she'd had with Mark before the epidemic flared out of control during Fourth of July weekend last year. They had eaten gooey marshmallows roasted over an open fire and had mind numbing sex in the foothills just outside of Golden, Colorado. Then there were all those nights with Aidan on the road where it seemed like just the two of them against the whole rotten world. She wanted those feelings back, wanted to dream about recreating civilization with someone she loved, one little piece at a time. If she couldn't have it with Mark…could she…
"I can't," she blurted before her mind caught up with her mouth."
Aidan's fingers dug into her arms as his warm lips pressed against her ear. "Why? You're not married. Why follow these idiots into hell? We've got a nice life here. It's rough, but it's comfortable. And, we're far enough away from the towns that we're usually not bothered too often."
It was the second time he had offered her a place at his side. Actually, it was the third, if she counted the initial rescue when she'd first met him. She knew this was the final offer. If she left with Mark and her group in the morning, it was certain she'd never see Aidan again. Now that she'd found him, it was hard to imagine another goodbye.
"I…I can't," she finally said, knowing that her loyalties were still with Mark even if he was going through a stupidity phase caused by fear. "I just…"
He wrapped his arms around her, squeezing tight. "Then, I'll go with you. I'll try to convince the rest of the Vultures to come too, because it would be stupid to split up."
Happy that she didn't have to make a choice, Cheryl rejoiced. She kissed Aidan on the cheek and ran to tell Mark the good news.
Chapter 13
A commotion in the center of camp distracted Cheryl from her mission to find Mark. People were gathering as Diego began to stumble around the embers of the dinner campfire. He sang an off key tune, slurring his words, half in English and half in Spanish, kicking clouds of dirt into fire pit.
"Must've had some tequila stashed in his bunk," Earl whispered to Cheryl.
There was laughter as everyone, even Aidan, seemed to enjoy the bit of raucous entertainment. She kicked back to watch with the others like it was some sort of comedy show.
Then, it quickly went downhill.
A glowing coal landed on one of Zach's boots, and he didn't realize it until he saw the smoke rising up from his toe and felt the heat from where it had started to burn through the leather.
"You son of a bitch!" Zach yelled. "Look what you did!"
Diego thought it was funny. "Hot head…hot foot! Makes sense, doesn't it, amigo?"
Before he could resume his song, Zach was in his face.
Every verbal barb that had been tossed between them had built up to this. Since meeting Diego, Zach seemed to have forgotten that Edmond was his favorite punching bag. Though she didn't want to see either of them get hurt, Cheryl thought these two men were more evenly matched foes which should make a more interesting challenge.
Amazed, she watched Diego sober up quick as the two men were chest to chest, staring each other down. As flames from the fire reflected in his brown eyes, he looked fierce. Looking just as intense, Zach crouched down like a tiger ready to spring. Then, they went at each other like a couple of rabid animals.
Hands balled into fists, Zach sprang forward and delivered the first blow, a bare-knuckled upper cut followed by a kick. His calculated moves were evidence that he had trained in the martial arts while it was quickly apparent that Diego was more the brawler type. He used his brute strength to punch while the tequila likely allowed him to bounce back from blows that would have made a more sober man crumble.
Cheryl winced ea
ch time she heard the THUNK of bone connecting with bone.
"Check out Bruce Lee and his Kung Fu juju!" Earl laughed.
"He's no match for Thor," one of the Vultures said. I've seen Diego fight plenty of times. He'll take a lot of hits while he's waiting for the other guy to tire then he'll go in for the kill with a big hammer."
After Diego threw a punch and missed Zach's jaw, he found himself in a headlock. Zach squeezed, making him flounder, but Diego escaped after a knee to his opponent's groin. After doubling over for a couple of seconds, Zach seemed to shake off the pain but not the scowl on his face.
By now, there was cheering and booing for both sides. It didn't seem to be just two men having a spat. It was Cheryl's group and the Vultures facing off.
"This is getting ugly," Jasmine said before turning away.
After a few more brutal exchanges, both men looked like they were seeing chirping birds flying around their heads as they parted, hands resting on knees, trying to regain their wits.
Cheryl hoped this was the end, but the men gave no sign of stopping. After gaining a second wind, they came together again and tumbled to the ground. After grappling in the dirt for a few seconds, neither was able to attain dominance,
"That's enough!" Jake shouted, taking a step forward, looking ready to jump in.
"No," Aidan said, holding a hand out to keep him back. "If they don't work it out now, it will be a never ending pissing contest."
Zach apparently decided that he was going to fight dirty too. He grabbed a fistful of Diego's long hair and yanked hard, giving him just enough window to regain his leverage and flip to the top. Before he threw his first punch, Cheryl saw movement behind them in the trees.
"Guys…" she said, pointing past the quarreling men. "We've got company…"
Aidan saw the Eater first. He yelled for everyone to grab their weapons. As the crowd began to disperse, the men stopped fighting, but didn't seem to realize what was going on until a man stumbled into the clearing. He wore a uniform, faded olive green pants and a matching shirt with torn pockets that had dark bloodstains marring the front. Cheryl gasped when she saw his sleeve. It had a dark blue, circular patch with the words "U.S. Border Patrol" stitched in yellow. Some of the skin was missing from the right side of his face, exposing his jaw line and rotting teeth, and his eyes were sunken, unseeing orbs, trickling out golden ooze. His filthy hands were hooked into claws, reaching forward as he walked.
Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance Page 15
