The door opened, the cold air blew in, and this time it was Katie, followed by Lilly, Bonnie, and a few others he couldn't put a name to.
“Amy is coming with Aaron,” she told him as she kissed him. Her eyes shifted to David and the blood on his hands. Conner rose and pulled her aside and filled her in on Arlene being bought in. Susan and Sandy had risen and went back into the clinic when Jessie had appeared at the door and motioned for them, Katie walked back to Janna, sat down beside her and pulled her head to her breast. She talked to her in low tones as if she were a child, one hand stroking her hair, smoothing if from her brow. Conner sat next to David, one hand on his shoulder, unsure what to do. A few seconds later Lilly got up to talk to Amy and Aaron as they entered. A second after that the clinic door opened, Jessie came out, took a nearby chair, turned it around backwards, straddled it, and sat down in front of Janna. She took one of Janna's hand and patted it lightly, her face set.
“No,” Janna moaned. She began to weep and tried to get up, but Katie held her. Janna broke down and sobbed.
“I'm sorry,” Jessie began.
THIRTEEN
The OutRunners
Year One December 20th
New York: Manhattan
They had tried to go into the city the day before, but once there, there had been no question of leaving the truck, the dead were everywhere. Millions, it seemed, roaming the streets: Waiting, watching.
Now Adam held a vial in his hand. “It seems impossible that this can work.”
“Just maybe it will free all of us,” Beth said softly.
Billy nodded his head. His eyes were tired. Beside him Pearl slept. Badly wounded, but he was confidant she would pull through. Her breathing had eased. The red lines of infection were gone from her leg.
Adam cupped the vial in his hand. A small glass vial that looked totally harmless, but had the power to wipe out the dead. Everything he had read about the vial said the compound did exactly what it was supposed to do. It was designed to attack the dead. Those who had made the original virus compound, SS-V2765 had known enough about it to create an antidote. Known enough to know they would need one. This supposedly stopped them in their tracks, returned them to death within twenty-four hours. It could survive for an indefinite period in the tissue of those living and those dead. It would end the plagues. It had seemed to work on Weston.
The second compound, REX34T, just Rex in most of the documents he had read, had no guarantees, except one: It would kill the virus in the living. It would end whatever the virus had begun in their bodies. It could also kill all of them in the process. He slipped a small silver canister from his pocket, looked it over, and then slipped it back into his pocket. He could not release that one, it was too complicated. It could change, would change, their entire world. The entire world, he corrected. It was not a decision one man could make. He would take it back and the council would decide.
“This one kills them, the other reverses whatever it did to us.” He looked at the one remaining vial. “We have enough paperwork to keep us all reading for months... I say this second one has to be decided by the council. Let them read the files and decide.”
The dead had surrounded the truck during the afternoon when they had tried to get closer, and they had been forced to retreat from the city itself. The dead here were not animated corpses, they were smart enough to use whatever they had at their disposal to their advantage. They had attacked the truck with bricks, concrete chunks, metal scrap. They had seen several who seemed to be directing the others. At first they had been reluctant to accept that as a possibility, but after watching for over an hour as darkness came down, they became convinced that the dead could be, and were being directed: Were acting in accord, as one, for a common purpose.
That thought had been sobering. How long would it be before they picked up more deadly weapons? How long before they graduated from bricks to machine guns... Tanks... What would be beyond their ability to use? Nothing they had decided.
They had moved off further, past the outskirts of the city, back across the river, and had found an open field and shut down for the night. The truck would protect them from the few that might find them. This morning they had come closer, not crossing the river into Manhattan, but driving through the ruins of New Jersey. Burned and crumbled buildings dotted the landscape for miles. The land looked war torn, destroyed. Adam had remembered the savage fires he had watched from the apartment on Park Avenue. The last he had seen of Jersey there had still been areas that were whole. What he saw now was destruction for miles on end. Nothing was left that was not destroyed.
The wind was blowing east, but that didn't matter that much. Most of the vial would end up in the river. From there it would find the ocean. From there it would find the world. Adam had no idea how long it would take to shut down the zombie plagues, but he was sure it would. This close there should be no doubt that the millions that inhabited New York would fall first. Who knew if the dead were not similarly gathered in cities across the earth. Paris, London, Berlin. Most likely they were, Adam thought.
“Hey,” Beth said. She slipped her hand into Adam's own. “We go back and discuss the second one, but we do this one now... The sooner the better...”
“I see that, but... my question is, what if they lied about this one too? Or just didn't know?What if this one does more than just kill the dead? I mean, that seems a little too good, doesn't it? Nothing we read said definitively that it wouldn't affect others, only that it would kill the dead that had risen. The first compound was only supposed to cause some dead to come back. Look what it did, nearly all of them come back now. It got stronger as it went.”
“Point,” Billy said glumly. “It didn't say that. It did say that the soldiers that were sent in to administer it suffered no side effects... I think it's the best shot we have, Adam. It's what we have. We can't leave them alive... Not after all of this.” Billy raised his hands to include the desolation on the monitors, but to also include the world.
Adam leaned forward and opened the end of the tube that lead to the outside. It was a fresh air tube that bypassed the filtration system that Dustin had built in, in case the air system failed for some reason. The smell of damp fire flooded the interior of the cramped truck. A second after that a soft chime began to alert them to the penetration of the sealed air system. Fans kicked on and the air began to reverse from the interior, pouring out of the tube to the outside. The smell of damp, charred wood and fire leaving. Replaced with the electric smell of cleansed air that always reminded Adam of static. There was no static in the air, it was just a cross connection his mind made. He looked at the small vial once more. Unconvinced that it would work at all, but just as convinced that it would destroy them also in the process of destroying the dead. He spun the small cap off as he leaned toward the tube. There was an audible rush of air, a slight whistling as the air was forced outside through the tube. Adam worked the edge of the small plastic seal up, pulled it free, and watched it tumble into the tube; sucked outside. That was it. That, according to what they had read, was all that was needed. The organism was in the air, just from whatever compound was on the back of the seal. The rest of the process wasn't even necessary. Over time that compound would continue to develop and grow in the bodies of the dead, spreading to anything that came into contact with it. Eventually it would overtake the entire globe. A dead free zone. One big happy family again. As he tipped the vial into the tube the airflow caught the stream of red liquid and took it. Some stained the tube, but the majority of it was in the wind, floating east, to the river and everything beyond the river. Adam let the vial tumble from his hands and watched it flip into the tube, making a small bonking sound as it hit the sides, bouncing back and forth, rattling in the tube as it made its way outside. A second later he replaced the cap on the tube. The silence held, save the high pitched hum of the fans, and then the fans cycled down and the silence was complete once more. Adam looked at the monitor, it all looked exactly the same
. He took Beth's hand. “Better take us home,” Adam said quietly.
The Nation
The Council
There were more people than could fit in the meeting area. Conner had an idea of how many they were, but even his best estimate was only that, an estimate. He called for quiet, and then adjourned the meeting to the largest barn in the valley, and waited until the crowd began to leave. He had thought about asking James to make sure the large barn was empty before he remembered James was gone. He had turned to Jake instead, and Jake and Craige had left to take care of it. Katie and Amy were somewhere in the large crowd with Lilly, Cindy and Annie.
The main meeting area of the cave was several hundred feet deep, and more than three hundred feet across. It had been packed with people outside and unable to get in. The barn in the valley was probably smaller, but they could leave the doors open and accommodate as many people as cared to attend. This would be the first meeting since James and Arlene had passed. Arlene had never made it past the first hour in the clinic. She had been warned several times by Steve and Jessie that she shouldn't attempt to carry the baby to term, that they should take it, that it could kill her to try, but she had ignored their warnings. In the end it had killed her and the baby. The rest of the events had passed as though they had been preordained and nothing had been able to stop them.
Conner had taken care of Bob, Arlene and the baby. Aaron had been with him. It was unimaginable to him that any of them could come back, but they both knew the truth. They were not buried in the small rockbound cemetery where the rest of the dead were buried, but placed in the smaller cemetery near the falls where the stones for Molly and Nellie had been placed. The baby rested in Arlene's arms.
David, Janna, Brad and Jessie stone had been long gone at that point. On the morning of the 10th their belongings were gone. No one had seen them go. Not the guards who had the posts that night, not their closest friends. They had simply vanished overnight. It was the talk of The Nation and one of the main reasons for the meeting.
“Hey,” Aaron said as he stepped close to Conner. “You look bad.”
“Feel bad,” Conner agreed. The people were still filing out and he watched them leave. He caught Katie's eyes through the crowd and mouthed I love you as she and the others made their way to the door. Se gave him a smile that lifted his heart. “Walk with me Aaron.”
They started slowly forward at the back of the crowd.
Cave Two
Josh
Josh sat quietly watching the morning come on. The air outside the plastic walls of the green house had gone from black to gray and it continued to lighten.
During the day the green house heated right up and the vents would be open by early afternoon into early evening. The vents were temperature sensitive. Purely mechanical, James had told him, but it was another thing to see them working. The vents were what had killed James, he thought now. It wasn't a new thought, he'd had it several times in the last week. Yesterday, last night, and he supposed he'd have it several more times before it finally moved on and left him be.
“Hey, Honey,” Shar said, startling him from his thoughts.
“Hey,” he told her. He tried a worn smile on his face.
She handed him a steaming cup of coffee and then sat down beside him.
“Thanks, Honey,” he told her.
“Having a hard time letting it go.” She said. It wasn't a question. His face told the story plainly.
He looked over at her and smiled a small, sad smile. “Not fooling you, I guess.”
“Not much... I've been there myself, Josh. You can't take blame that isn't yours. And you can't take blame when there is none at all to take.,” she told him.
He nodded. “I've told myself that more than once, but it's not the way I'm built. I'm always responsible. Someone has to be: If I hadn't wanted this project, James wouldn't have been here. If he hadn't been here, he wouldn't be gone... He'd still be alive.” He held up his hands to stop Shar's protests. “I know, all wrong, I know,” he said. He placed his hands into his lap, clasped them tightly together and then released them: Picked up the coffee cup and drank deeply.
“Well it is,” Shar told him. “You could no more make that man go anywhere than anyone else could. He was here because he wanted to do this. This whole life we live here was his idea. His ideal, you could even say. He missed none of it if he could help it, and he wouldn't have missed this,” Shar said.
Josh nodded. “I know, and I'm not as far into the self pity as it seems. I just can't see the sense in it. And not just James dying, the rest of it. To think that some of these people were going to try to take this away from him is crazy. Makes me wonder if he knew it,” Josh said.
“Mommy? Daddy,” Alicia said from behind them.
Josh broke into a smile. “Come here, Baby girl.” He picked her up and sat her on his lap. “Now what do you want, eh?”
“Some breakfast, and I don't want no coffee,” she told him.
“Yeah? Well how's pancakes and syrup sound?” He asked. He stood from the ground, swinging Alicia to one hip as he did.
“I like pannycakes,” she told him.
“Pannycakes? Okay, come on mommy,” Josh said as he offered his free hand and then pulled Shar from the ground. “How about dad makes the breakfast this morning?”
“Do you know how to do it?” Alicia asked.
Josh laughed and hugged her. He put his other arm around Shar and the three of them headed for the house.
The Valley
Conner and Aaron
“So he just wants a piece of ass, but he can't say he wants a piece of ass, so he says he loves her and fucks up everything,” Aaron said.
“That's about it,” Conner agreed. “His words.” They were walking far behind the crowd of people that were making their way to the third barn, a half mile down the valley.
“Kind of ironic... James dies... Arlene dies... The baby dies... And the two that started it all are just fine.” Aaron said. He looked at Conner who had nodded. “I wouldn't say that, or speak like I am to anyone else.”
“I know that,” Conner said. “One of the things that I like about this relationship we have is the zero bullshit factor. I don't speak straight to anyone else all the time. Not even Kate... I hope that doesn't sound as bad as it did to my ears when it left my lips, but whether it does or doesn't it's the truth. I am as honest with her as I can be, but some things I know to stay away from... She doesn't see it the same, and she is the kind of woman that will do as she sees fit... That might not always be what has to be done.”
Aaron nodded. “She wanted them to stay.”
“She did,” Conner agreed.
“An impossibility... Does anyone else know how deep it went? Steve? Sandy and Susan?” Aaron asked.
Conner shook his head. “You and me... They haven't said anything to you since we talked to them?”
“Nothing... I don't trust them, just the way it is,” Aaron said.
“Neither do I. They'll be gone soon enough though.”
“You downplayed their involvement when we spoke to them... I don't truly believe they will appreciate it.”
“Me either, but the alternative was laying it all out. Everything James told me... Their plot can't have become common knowledge like David and Janna's tryst did, or we would have heard it,” Conner said. “And that would be the last thing we need. A division between all of us, and it could have done just that.”
Aaron nodded. “Think they will do it? Go along with us, leave it all be?”
“Yeah. The alternative was made clear, and I will do it,” Conner said.
They walked along in silence for a few minutes. They were nearly to the barn.
“New doctor will be here inside of a week... Traveling peddler will bring him... Rollie... Trades all over what he calls the territories,” Conner said.
“Heard something about that, and what's the other place... New place down south, Alabama something... Island, Alabama Island.”
“We'll be trading with them through this man Rollie too,” Conner agreed.
Conner paused as they reached the barn. “I have your support and friendship, Aaron?”
“Don't question it,” Aaron told him.
Conner nodded and moved into the barn. The crowd split apart as he made his way to a cleared, raised platform Jake had thrown together out of empty palettes. Katie, Amy, and Steve Choi waited on one side, Josh and Lilly on the other side. They had lost four members of the council in the last week. They would be replaced today.
Conner held his hands high until the crowd quieted. The early morning was cold, light snow fell outside the doors. Most of the people had made it inside and the doors were partially shut, it was already warming quickly in the large space with so many people. A young woman whose name seemed perpetually to leave his mind handed him a slip of paper and he opened it up and looked at it. The silence settled in.
“I've just been told,” he held the note up and turned it back and forth so the crowd could see it. “We are eighteen hundred and fifty-three souls today... And there are still parties coming every day.” The crowd murmured, a few cheered: They were accepting of the news, but it wasn't really what they wanted to hear.
“This is not going to be an easy meeting. We have a lot of territory to cover.” The big doors moved and Conner saw a few more work their way in. Josh and Shar, Craige and Cindy, others he had seen, knew by face, but did not yet know by name. He looked down at the pallets. You are just a tin god standing on a stack of wood, he told himself. And he was. Maybe he had thought he was something better than that for a while, but he wasn't. He looked up and smiled.
“You know, sometimes a person in this position: Responsibility, leadership, can lose their way if they are not careful. If they don't keep an eye on what really matters, what's important.”He paused. “No one here has allowed that to happen. We've suffered a loss. An enormous loss, but we're intact. We're strong, united and we're moving forward.”
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 134
