by James Cook
The staff sergeant smiled. “Sounds like things are getting serious.”
Caleb shrugged silently and left the barracks.
*****
“So how long do you think you’ll be gone?” Miranda asked. She and Caleb were sitting on her couch with the last fading light of the afternoon slanting in through curtained windows.
“No telling. Could be a couple of weeks, could be more than a month.”
Miranda chewed her lip, absorbing the news. “You’ve been on missions like this one before, right?”
“Yep. Lots of them.”
“You don’t sound worried.”
“That’s because I’m not.”
Miranda smiled and ran a hand down his left cheek, fingers tracing over the splatter of scar tissue there. “You’re not invincible, you know.”
“I know.”
“Then you should be at least a little scared.”
“I’ll save it for when the shooting starts. A healthy measure of fear keeps you sharp; worrying just makes you tired and sloppy. Burns up energy. That’s how people get killed. They lose focus.”
Miranda stared at him with irritation and affection, then slid closer to lay her head on the hollow of his shoulder. “When do you leave?”
“Tuesday morning. 0900.”
“Do you have to report for duty tomorrow?”
He shook his head. “Not until Tuesday morning. Got all my stuff ready earlier. All I have to do is grab it and go.”
She smiled and kissed him on the side of the neck. “So we get to spend the day together?”
“Yep. What do you want to do?”
Miranda sat up on her knees and began unbuttoning her shirt. “I can think of a few things.”
Caleb grinned and pulled her onto his lap.
*****
Later, after the sun set and they had enjoyed a shower together, Miranda lit a few candles in her bedroom and she and Caleb lay entwined in the soft light, their faces almost touching. “So you left off with the men who attacked Lauren,” she said.
Caleb waited a few heartbeats to answer. “Yeah.”
“What happened next?”
He pushed a lock of blonde hair behind Miranda’s ear and let out a heavy sigh. “Had to come up sooner or later, didn’t it?”
“It’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“No. It needs to be said. Full disclosure and all that.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll warn you again: you might not like what you’re going to hear.”
Miranda kissed his lips and then the tip of his nose. “I’ll take my chances.”
TWELVE
Houston Metro Area, Texas
Lauren was never the same again after the attack. The next year was a bad one for us all.
She lost weight. She had nightmares. The lines of her face deepened, and dark rings took up permanent residence under her eyes. Little sounds made her jumpy. She got a conceal and carry license and wouldn’t leave the house unarmed. Dad tried to convince her to start seeing a therapist, but she was having none of it. She insisted she was fine, though it was plain for anyone to see she wasn’t. There were cracks in her foundation.
Then came the Outbreak.
I remember exactly where I was that day. I had just turned eighteen and had finished school a few months early. We were out on the patio eating a steak dinner to celebrate when my dad’s cell phone rang. He picked it up, checked who was calling, and answered.
“What’s up, Blake?”
I watched his face grow confused, then disbelieving, then tight with strain. “How bad is it?” he asked.
That got Lauren’s attention. We sat still, the two of us, watching him intently.
“Okay. I’ll do that. No, not yet. If it comes to that, we’ll communicate via radio. All right, see you soon.” Dad hung up and sat quietly, staring into nowhere.
“What is it?” Lauren asked, eyes worried.
“Trouble in Atlanta,” Dad said and stood up. “Come on, let’s see what’s going on.”
Lauren and I shared a confused glance, then got up and followed him inside. Dad turned the television on to CNN and increased the volume. By then, the first of many, many hordes had already overrun the initial police barricades and begun to spread throughout the city. Fires raged, riots broke out, people looted stores, neighbors turned on each other, violence grew rampant. The city looked like a war zone. The three of us sat on the couch in shocked disbelief, our dinner sitting forgotten on the picnic table outside. An hour or so after turning on the TV, we watched three ghouls drag a reporter to the ground and begin ripping him apart. As the cameraman fled, the news feed abruptly cut away.
Lauren made a small choking sound and ran for the bathroom. I looked over at my father, a cold feeling spreading through my hands and face, and said, “Dad, what the hell are those things? They can’t be people.”
The old man said nothing for a long time. Finally, he stood up and walked over to the window. “I heard rumors from other operators, but I didn’t think they were true.”
“What rumors? What are you talking about?”
He put his hands on his hips and looked down. “About some kind of disease that turns people into … those things you saw. Other operators, guys who did missions in North Korea and China talked about it-” Dad looked up suddenly, realizing what he was saying. He never talked about his time in Delta Force, not even to Lauren and me.
“Caleb, son, we might be in trouble here.”
“What do you know, Joseph?”
Dad and I turned to see Lauren standing in the hallway. We hadn’t realized she was standing there. Her arm trembled as she pointed at the television. “Joseph Hicks, if you know something about what’s going on in Atlanta, you tell us right now.”
Dad shook his head. “Lauren, you know I can’t talk about that stuff. I signed a con-”
“I don’t give a shit about your confidentiality agreement!” Lauren advanced on Dad, hands balled into fists, veins standing out on her forearms. “If you know something, you tell us now!”
“Okay, okay,” Dad said, hands upraised. “Calm down, honey. Listen, just sit down, all right? Come on.” Moving slowly, he put a gentle hand on her arm and carefully guided her back to the couch.
It wasn’t the first time since the attack that she had blown up under stress. Dad and I knew the best way to handle it was to give her time to calm down, but I didn’t think it would work in this case. She practically hummed with tension.
When we were all seated, Dad kept his voice low. “Look, all I know is rumors. Okay? Stuff I heard in bars over too many drinks. The first time I heard about it, this guy I knew from another unit and I were talking, and he got drunk, and he told me the North Korean’s had some kind of virus or something that turns people into cannibals. Said it … messes up their brains somehow. They can’t move very fast, but they don’t feel pain either. The only way to drop them is to shoot them in the head. He said …” Dad stopped and put a hand over his mouth.
“What, Joe?” Lauren asked. “What did he say?”
“This is going to sound crazy.”
Lauren’s voice rose. “What did he say, Joe?”
“He said they’re dead.” Dad looked Lauren in the eye. “He said they’re walking dead people.”
If not for the television and the low drone of household appliances, you could have heard a pin drop.
“Joe,” Lauren said, “that’s not possible.”
Dad held out his hands. “Look, I didn’t believe him either. Later on, I heard the same thing from other people and I still didn’t believe it. I passed it off as superstition, or people seeing something that wasn’t there. There had to be some other explanation. Those guys were soldiers, after all, not scientists. But after what I’ve seen today ...”
“Is it contagious?” I asked.
He turned to look at me. “From what I’ve heard, yeah.”
“Oh God, is it airborne?” Lauren asked.
Dad held out his hands. “Look, at this point, you know as much as I do. For now, let’s just stay calm and keep an eye on things. I’m sure the government will get it all sorted out.”
It comforted me, then, to hear him say that. But in retrospect, we should have followed our instincts.
We should have run for our lives.
Instead, for the next few days, we huddled together around the television and watched the end of the world unfold.
*****
Hope is a powerful force.
The best thing about hope is it is tenacious. It does not die easily. And like every emotion, it has it’s dark counterpart. To love, hate. To joy, sorrow. To confidence, fear.
To hope, despair.
The bad thing about hope is it can get in the way of another, more important emotion: acceptance. And acceptance, important and helpful at it is, also has its counterpoint.
Denial.
We held out hope in those early days. Hope that the government would find a cure, that the military would find a way to defeat the undead (and by then we knew that was what they were). We kept faith that someone, somewhere, would figure out a solution. But by the time the Outbreak crossed the Mississippi River, it was no longer hope.
We were in full-blown denial.
Eleven days after the Outbreak started, I woke up to an angry orange sky out my bedroom window. Not the soft yellow of a spring morning, or the gray of a rainy day, or even the clear blue of a cloudless sky.
No.
Orange. Dark orange, like some great torch had suffused the surface of the sky. I got out of bed, dressed quickly, and went to wake up my father.
“Hey Dad, you need to see this,” I said, shaking his shoulder. He awoke in an instant, the glaze of sleep clearing rapidly from his eyes.
“What is it, son?” he asked. Beside him, Lauren stirred and began to sit up.
I pointed. “Look out the window.”
His eyes shifted and grew wide. “Mother of God.”
Lauren’s hand went to her mouth. “What …”
Dad threw off the covers, shrugged into a shirt, and started toward the front door with me and Lauren following close behind. I kept my hand on his shoulder as he opened the door like we were about to execute a room entry. Dad hesitated for a moment and looked back at me.
“Caleb, take a deep breath, son.”
I did, and let my hand drop.
“Stay calm.” His eyes tracked back and forth between Lauren and me. “Whatever is happening, we’ll handle it together, okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
Behind me, Lauren was silent, but I could feel her fingers gripping the back of my shirt.
I was a head taller than my father by then, so I could see over his shoulder as he opened the door. According to the clock in the living room, it was just after eight in the morning. But judging from the darkness outside, I would have thought the hour no earlier than five or six. A malignant haze hung over the neighborhood, painting houses in shades of amber and black. Everywhere I looked something drifted down like snow, covering lawns, streets, and cars with a thin sheen of gray.
“Is that … ash?” I asked.
Dad said nothing. He pushed out the door and strode into the front yard, one palm turned upward. He stared at it for a few moments, then rubbed his fingers together. Looking around, I could see a few of our neighbors standing in their yards doing the same thing, faces locked in dumbfounded fear.
“It’s ash.” Dad said. “Come on.”
I followed him to the end of the street and around the corner. Our house faced south, away from nearby Houston. There was a hill at the end of the street where we could see the city’s skyline to the east. The three of us climbed it, Dad leading the way. When we reached the summit, we stopped cold.
At the edge of the horizon, Houston was in flames.
Great black pillars of smoke streaked upward, staining the clouds above. The city skyline was invisible, obscured by the choking haze. Undulating silvery streaks extended along the highways where people were fleeing the city. The sounds of explosions and gunfire popped and echoed across the distance. I stood transfixed, unable to speak or even think, Lauren’s hand clutched in my own.
My father chose that moment to utter the most profound understatement in human history. “This is bad.”
I couldn’t help it. I let out a bark of hysterical laughter. “Oh, really? You think?”
Dad turned and glared at me. It was on his lips to say something harsh, but whatever he saw on my face stopped him. His dark eyes softened and he laid a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, son. Let’s go home. We have things to do.”
*****
If there was one thing my father believed in, it was preparedness.
He and I stood in front of a workbench in the garage. In front of us lay a collection of pistols and rifles, boxes of ammunition, spare magazines, tactical gear, and freeze-dried emergency rations.
“We’ll take a rifle, a pistol, and a backup piece each,” Dad said. “No point in bringing anything else. It’ll just be extra weight.”
“We should bring the hunting rifle and the .22s,” I replied. “Useful. Ammo’s easy to find.”
Dad thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “Agreed.”
I scanned the collection of pistols, shotguns, and carbines, and wondered what to do with the ones we weren’t bringing along. My father glanced at me, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing.
“We’ll give them away,” he said. “No sense in letting them go to waste. Things are going to get bad pretty soon. People will need a way to defend themselves.”
I let out a breath. “Yeah. Okay.”
“When we leave, I’ll open the garage door, put a note on them. Let folks take what they need.”
“Sure.”
“You all right, son?”
I shook my head. “No, Dad. I’m pretty fucking far from all right.”
For once, he did not reprimand the use of profanity. Behind us, the door opened.
“Gary’s on the phone,” Lauren said.
We turned toward her at the same time. Her jaw was tense, the veins in her neck pronounced. Over the last few days, the tension in her had grown to a fever pitch. There was a jitteriness in her eyes, like she was afraid to look at any one thing for too long. A sharp pang of worry lanced through my stomach as I looked at her, and I wished I could think of something to say to calm her down. But I knew nothing would make any difference just then.
I followed Dad inside as he went into the kitchen and picked up the satellite phone. All of the instructors at BWT had been issued one in case of emergency. At that point, both landline and cell phone communication had shut down.
“Hello? Gary?” he said.
Gary was Dad’s boss and the owner of Black Wolf Tactical. He lived in Oklahoma and trusted his employees to manage his many businesses, so I saw him only rarely. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, balding, fantastically obese, and always in possession of some silicone-breasted, botoxed, bleach-blonde trophy a couple of decades younger than he. But for all that, he had always treated my father and the other instructors at BWT with respect. His booming bass buzzed through the phone loud enough I could hear it from three feet away.
“Joe, how you holding up down there?” he said.
Dad scraped a hand across his beard stubble. “If I’m honest, Gary, not too good. Houston is gone.”
There was a long silence. “Listen, Joe. I’ve already called most of the other fellas. I want you all to go to BWT and take whatever you need, then get the hell out of there.”
“You heard anything from your contacts on the east coast?” Dad replied.
“No, Joe. That whole part of the country has gone dark. Listen, friend. Do what I said. Get your family, take what you need, and get the hell out of East Texas. The Army won’t be able to stop those things from overrunning the place. Head for Colorado. That’s your best bet.”
“What about y
ou, Gary?”
“Don’t worry about me. I have my own plans. Just do what I said.”
Dad ground his teeth, his grip tight around the phone. “Gary?”
“Yes, Joe.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Good luck, my friend. God be with you.”
“Yeah,” Dad said bitterly. “Same to you.”
He hung up, then looked to Lauren and me. “Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
THIRTEEN
We were the last to arrive.
Dad took back roads on the drive over. We saw only a few other cars along the way, all laden down with as much cargo as they could carry, wide-eyed drivers clutching steering wheels with strained white knuckles and driving faster than was safe for conditions. I wondered how many of them we would pass wrecked on the side of the road.
What few houses we passed looked abandoned, some of their front doors hanging open as a result of their former residents’ haste to escape the approaching blaze. The sky above grew steadily darker while the choke of falling ash became thicker and thicker. When we finally arrived at BWT, Blake, Tyrel, and Mike’s vehicles were in the main office parking lot.
“Leave the rifles,” Dad said. “Pistols only for now.”
Reluctantly, I laid my carbine aside. The three of us piled out of Dad’s truck and went to the front door to find it unlocked. Dad put a hand on his pistol, pushed the door open, and leaned inside. It was dark in the foyer, but I detected a faint illumination deeper within.
“Blake? Mike? Tyrel? It’s Joe. Anybody in there?”
A muffled voice shouted back. “Yeah, just a sec.” A moment later Mike appeared around the corner. “The others are in the armory. Come on.”
I followed Dad inside as he proceeded down the hall past the empty receptionist’s desk. He took a small LED flashlight from his tactical vest and shined it ahead of us. The light at the end of the hall grew steadily brighter until we turned the corner and saw shadows of people moving around in the armory.
“What’s the story?” Dad asked as we drew near.
