Chad exhaled the breath he had been holding and reflexively inhaled deep. The stench was incredible—putrid and completely overpowering. Before he could wrinkle his nose, his gag reflex kicked in and he threw up. Choking on bile and stomach acid, he pushed and shoved his way over the squishy bags, forcing his mind not to think about the things he touched.
He slipped and slid through the rest, choking and coughing in the stench that enveloped and covered him like a blanket. At least Chad staggered away from the enormous pile of medical waste stacked against the side of the building. He fell to his knees and threw up again, splattering the concrete with bile.
Now where do I go?
He stumbled across the open space to a small utility building. In the dark, all he could tell was that it was made of concrete. It didn't appear to have any garbage piled up against the side so that was all that mattered. He crouched down behind an air conditioner unit and tried to spit the taste of vomit from his mouth as quietly as possible. He looked back the way he'd come, toward the glow of the army camp near the terminals.
Not that way.
Behind him, maybe even on the other side of his new hiding spot, a jet roared to life. He peered around the corner and watched as a dark shape, impossibly large, moved by with its blinking strobe lights on the wings. The glow from jet turbines on the long wings made it look like some otherworldly creature.
Chad worked his way along the length of the building, keeping it between him and the planes, until he reached the far corner. He peered into the night and saw…nothing. Behind the line of sleeping transport jets, there was nothing but pitch-black darkness.
I think that's south…it should be brighter—Arlington’s that way…but if the power’s out…I don’t know.
Flashlights bobbed around the corner of a silhouetted building about two hundred feet away. Chad pressed himself against the wall and tried not to move. He desperately hoped the soldiers didn't have night vision goggles. The lights swept steadily back and forth as the soldiers walked, searching around the nearby buildings and parked aircraft.
Keep moving…have to keep moving…
As he watched, a truck rolled up and disgorged another squad of soldiers. They all wore chem-suits and masks too. More flashlights turned on. The soldiers all lined up across the tarmac and walked deliberately south as a group. They moved slow and swept their lights in a regular pattern.
They think I went that way.
Chad's hope sank. He couldn't go back the way he had come—he'd run right into the doctor and who knows how many more soldiers. He couldn't keep going south—they were actively looking for him that way. Chad peered around the corner toward the huge jets.
Can't go that way either. They'll really be watching those planes—it's a long open space to the other side of the runways.
Chad slid down the wall to the ground and drew his knees up to his chest. In the distance, the ink-black sky above fought with the soft orange glow from Fort Worth's funeral pyre. Now that he had a clear view, he figured half the city must be on fire.
A smile spread across his face. That's where I'll go—they'll never expect it.
He stood and only got a few steps before a set of headlights made him dive back for cover. He held his breath as the vehicle rumbled closer and closer. Praying they hadn't found him, Chad watched—helpless and unable to move. The lights splayed across the garbage dump and the engine revved as it grew closer. Gears whined and brakes squealed as the boxy delivery truck parked between the two buildings.
Chad scrunched down as low as he could behind the air conditioner and waited. The driver opened a sliding door and hopped out, tugging on the seams around his helmet. He didn't wear camo gear like the other soldiers, but a blue version of the biohazard suit the doctor had worn on the bus. The man waved at his partner who appeared around the front of the truck and the two switched on wrist-mounted lights before casually walking to the pile of medical waste.
As he watched, a horrific sight appeared under the new lights. Piles of oblong white and black bags had been stacked like cord wood as high as the roof along the rear of the building. The grisly display extended out at least 20 feet, making a blocky ramp.
Oh my God, those are bodies!
The two men dragged the body bags unceremoniously to the truck and heaved them into the open cargo area. Chad cringed at the heavy, hollow sound each corpse made as it landed inside the vehicle. His hands flew to his mouth—he could smell death on his fingers. He discovered a sticky goo that coated his arms and pants. The thick, disgusting smell roiled his stomach. They’d hear him if he threw up again.
Stop. Stop thinking about it. Stop it!
Blood thundered in his ears as he watched the men go about their grisly task. They talked to each other in muffled grunts. He couldn't make out what they said, but he saw their heads move and they gestured with their hands while they worked. The bigger one slung bodies over his shoulder and walked back to the truck. The smaller one had to drag his bags by the corner across the ground. As the worker passed through the headlights, Chad's eyes locked on a dark streak smearing the ground after a particularly large bag made its way to the truck.
Chad threw up as quietly as he could. He hoped the truck’s idling engine was enough to cover his retching after all.
He quickly lost track of how long the men worked and his leg fell asleep before they seemed ready to take a break. The smaller one leaned against the side of the truck, hands on his knees. The big one climbed into the driver's seat and busied himself with something inside. Chad waited them out. Once they left, he'd be able to slip away to the west and head for Fort Worth.
A flashlight sweeping the ground near the truck snapped him away from his plans. The soldiers had returned. Chad strained his ears to hear and shifted just enough so he could see the soldiers approaching the truck. The leader stepped forward and waved with his rifle pointed at the ground. The others hung back, clutching their weapons like magic talismans, to protect them from the contents of the death wagon.
"…see anything?" asked the soldier. Chad could barely hear him.
In the dim light, he saw the suited man shake his head inside a bulbous helmet. His lips moved, but he was too far away to hear.
"This is bullshit," the soldier closest to him muttered to his comrades.
"Shut up, Lopez."
"That kid ain't here. I'm telling you—he's long gone."
"Tomlinson's right, Lo. You want to deal with the Captain if we go back empty-handed, and it turns out he was here all along?"
"Fuck off, Jones."
Tomlinson laughed. "Thought so. Sarge is just double-checking. He's covering all our asses—even yours, Lopez."
After a few more tense moments, the sergeant returned to his troops. He shined his flashlight despondently around the area as he walked, double-checking that nothing had been missed.
"S'up, Sarge?" asked Lopez.
"We're fuckin' the frog here, boys."
"They didn't see anything?"
"Nothing," said the sergeant. He slung his rifle over a shoulder. "Come on, if that kid's still here, he must have gone east or west."
"Fuck me," hissed Lopez. "You think he went downtown?"
The sergeant's silhouette turned toward Fort Worth. "Don't know. He came in on a bus that drove through that shit." The soldier turned and gestured east. "My guess is he went that way—across the runways. It's dark—I don't see no lights over there. Somehow he slipped across the flight line and made it across the airfield."
"Aw, shit," grumbled Tomlinson.
"We're not getting any chow tonight are we?" asked Lopez like a kid who just realized he wouldn't be getting a pony for his birthday.
The sergeant slapped Lopez on the back. "Cheer up, Lo—that's why you got those damn fine MREs. Let's get going. We got Bravo coming to back us up in ten. I want to be on the other side of the flight line by then. You take Tomlinson and head west. If he went that way, he won't get far."
"Shit. Yeah, S
arge," Lopez complained.
"Hey," snapped the sergeant. "You either help track this little shit down or you stick around and help them two clear out this batch of bodies."
"What are they doing with all the ziplocs?" asked Jones.
"I don't know—taking them the fuck away from here. He said there's more coming in. Why do you care? Get your ass moving."
Chad watched Lopez and Tomlinson march off toward the glow from Fort Worth. There goes my escape plan. He checked around the corner and saw the sergeant lead Jones east toward the runways.
His heart pounded in his chest. He was trapped. Flashlights bobbed to the south, Lopez and Tomlinson went west, the sergeant and his partner went east. The main body of troops blocked the way north.
What do I do? I can't stay here…
His eyes drifted back to the two workers loading another heavy black bag. Chad watched the men toss this one last corpse into the truck and double over, catching their breath. They slowly worked their way to the front of the truck. As the smaller one turned, Chad saw his visor was almost fogged over and he hadn't noticed the light left on the ground by the pile of bodies.
Maybe if I hid back in the stacks of bags, I can get out before they come back for another load.
That thought led nowhere. If they came back and loaded the rest before the soldiers left the area, they’d eventually find him in there. He'd have to open a bag and climb in with a corpse or take its place. Chad suppressed the urge to vomit as he watched the truck turn around. Brake lights illuminated his world in red.
Chad braced himself to run. Did they see him?
The smaller man got out and trotted back to the remainder of the morbid staircase of body bags. He picked up his flashlight and walked back to the truck, shaking his head. The driver yelled something through the door and the smaller man waved his middle finger as he climbed aboard.
Now or never.
Chad bolted from cover and threw himself into the truck's open back end. He lay there in the dark while the men finished, taking short breaths through his mouth to avoid the smell as best he could. Rigid softness pushed against him from all sides. Finally he felt the truck shudder to life. Chad dry heaved all the way to the edge of the airfield in silent misery until another thought occurred to him.
Oh, God—I hope they're not burning the corpses…
CHAPTER 6
Fugitive
CHAD SNIFFED AT THE stench of death that clung to his clothes like a curse. Hiding among the corpses had paid off—he smelled like the ass-end of a weeks-dead rhinoceros, but he was alive. The truck had taken almost 15 minutes, but it had finally delivered him to the southeastern corner of the airport. The army had excavated a long trench just east of a creek that meandered between the airport and the town of Euless.
How much it would suck to live across that creek and have a giant pit full of rotting corpses within sight of your backyard?
The bed of the truck had lifted to the sound of whining hydraulics and he felt the bodies under him shift and slide toward the gate.
Chad had time to glimpse the fires in Fort Worth before he tumbled with the rest of the morbid load of corpses into the pit. Bones cracked all around him and a particularly heavy body knocked the air out of him, but he was still alive. He lay there, holding his breath as long as possible between breathes and kept his eyes closed.
Over the idling of the truck's engine, he heard muffled talking from the two men in biohazard suits. Chad forced himself to think about anything other than where he was and realized it probably didn't matter that the burial pit was within sight of the neighborhood across the creek. Everyone over there was probably dead too.
Chad hid under a thin layer of bodies so long that he almost fell asleep before the noise of the truck's engine had faded away in the distance. The corpses had been packed tight underneath him in the pit. That made it a little easier for him to wriggle free of the latest arrivals, most of whom were mercifully still in body bags. Seeing a bunch of dead bodies staring at him in various states of decay would’ve been the last straw.
Chad coughed and gagged and threw up three more times before he finally reached the creek. He gasped and fell to his knees in the ice cold water, ignoring the shock of pain that shot up his limbs. He had to scour the death goo off his hands and arms and get the awful, lingering smell of the pit out of his nose.
When he emerged from the creek dripping wet and shivering, he at last felt somewhat normal. He'd done it—he'd escaped the army base and an uncertain future at the hands of Dr. Raythie. At least she wasn't around to jab needles in his arms anymore.
She'd taken six blood samples on the grim ride from Haslet to the airport. Each time she'd struggled with the needle. He understood that the gloves on her hands had made it difficult—but toward the end he had been ready to do it himself.
On a whim, he fished the sodden radio out of his pocket, replaced the battery and reattached the plastic rear cover. Raythie’s voice squawked loud and clear: "—ever you are, please come back! You have no idea—"
He snapped it off again. She sounded a little hoarse and definitely tired, but there was a sense of urgency in her voice that hadn’t been there last night. He smiled in the early glow of the sunrise.
They don't know where I am. He turned west for the orange glow of Fort Worth and started to walk.
Hours later, Chad rubbed his eyes. He wasn't dreaming—it really was dawn. He'd almost given up hope of ever seeing the sunrise during the cold, never-ending night.
By the time the sun was fully up over the horizon, he'd crossed through several neighborhoods and worked his way past Highway 121 and its deserted shopping strips. The whole night he'd seen only a few vehicles on the roads and some half-starved dogs, growling and barking from their backyard prisons.
Chad assumed most of their owners had died—every house he could see had the telltale X sprayed across the front door in black paint. He knew he'd find nothing but dead bodies in those houses. So did everyone else—that's why only three of the hundreds of houses he passed had broken windows. It seemed there weren't any looters left to care and the few that remained wouldn't risk tripping over a corpse to steal.
Still…walking along a good sized road in broad daylight as a wanted fugitive from the army didn't appeal to him—though it did help keep him warm. When the world brightened enough to read the road signs a block away, Chad decided it was time to find a place to hole up for the day and rest. Being immune to the virus had its benefits—he could break in to any house and take what he needed without worrying about getting infected.
Chad stopped at an intersection to listen for any sounds of life or pursuit. In the distance, a single siren wailed, followed by a few wispy gunshots farther away. Dogs barked behind him—he'd set off a chain reaction of noise as he moved down the street—but other than that there was nothing. No one was out and about, no cars had driven past in the last two hours, and the world seemed depressingly empty.
Will I be the last person left on the planet?
He shook his head and picked the house to his right. The notion was as scary as it was silly. Somewhere, maybe on a tiny island in the Pacific, the virus would spare people. It had too. Chad refused to believe that everyone would eventually get sick and die. Besides, he'd seen at least a thousand people at the airport that had survived.
So far, a small voice whispered in his mind.
He stepped up to the tall front door of his chosen house and tried the knob. It was unlocked. The government had suggested people leave the doors unlocked so medical personnel could get in during the opening days of the crisis. He stared at the big black X on the door. No one else would ever come here again.
An engine hummed in the distance. Chad opened the door and quickly stepped inside the tomb. He blinked at the swirling dust motes that flitted before his face.
Now what do I do?
He waited for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness, then moved to his right and into the front room then crou
ched by the big bay window. Peeling back a corner of the curtain, he immediately spied headlights down the street. A big armored truck—like the ones he'd seen at the airport—rolled ominously down the street, dwarfing the abandoned cars it passed.
He couldn't be sure, but the massive truck seemed to slow down a little as it passed him. He held his breath until the truck turned the corner and rumbled south.
Wow. That thing's like a tank on wheels.
Chad leaned back against the wall and sat, breathing deep of the stuffy, stagnant air in the house. At least it was a little warmer than outside. He closed his eyes, not caring where the dead might be. It—or they—were probably upstairs in bedrooms. That’s where most people seemed to be when they died.
Not Helen, though, he reminded himself. His baby sister had collapsed on the floor in front of the bathroom without warning. She'd died in his arms, choking on pink foam that bubbled up from her ruined lungs. She’d been scared when she died—he could see it in her rapidly blinking eyes as she looked at him with trembling lips.
He rapped the back of his head against the wall and clenched his teeth. It wasn't fair. So many people had suffered and died already—his family, his neighbors, the people in Fort Worth and in cities all around the world—and here he was, healthy as a horse and breaking into houses. The only thing wrong with him was an empty belly, parched throat, and the stink of death that still clung to him like a wet blanket.
Chad lowered himself to the floor under the window and rested his head on his bent arm for a pillow. He may have broken in, but he couldn't bring himself to get comfortable on the dead family's couch just yet. He turned the radio on at a low volume and hoped it would wake him if anyone other than Dr. Raythie started speaking. Who knew if they were still in the area?
He knew he needed a plan, or at least an idea where the back door was, but he was asleep before he could force his body back up from its spot beneath the front windows.
The Source: A Wildfire Prequel Page 4
