“It’s in the sugar,” I heard myself say before the thought had even formed in my mind. Gerry looked up, motioning me over to join him. With a little reluctance, I did, sinking into the chair beside his while he turned back to the mic.
“Not sure whether you heard that, folks, but I have Dr. Brianna Lewis with me here, and she says that it’s in the sugar.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d suddenly drawn a gun on me—no, scratch that, I would have been more prepared for the gun—and when he saw my startled look, Gerry pressed a button on the mix board in front of him that made the red light on the mic go out.
“We all saw the video,” he explained, then winked. “Or those of us who still had energy to run the TV and computers did.”
He was referring to the video that I’d narrated, back when I’d still thought that all this was just about some possible bioweapon stored away in the vault of the Green Fields Biotech labs. I hadn’t realized that they’d even managed to upload it, let alone that people had drawn the—surprisingly right—conclusions, if he was suddenly thinking of me as an expert.
“That wasn’t even about—“ I started, but then shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Got a few minutes to talk to my listeners?” he asked, winking at me again.
I was about to reply that I doubted anyone was actually listening, when the speakers cracked loudly as someone cooed into his microphone. The reception was bad, but I could still make out the words.
“I knew it was the sugar! I told you all so! Tell that sucker Jim that I knew it first!”
“Is that you, Dave?” Gerry asked, smiling.
“Nah, Dave’s out cold after pulling the last shift. It’s Kevin,” replied the voice. “But Dave called it, too. Right after that guy went ballistic over his ice cream.” He paused, then whistled. “Hey, doc. You’re a legend. Just saying, if you haven’t gotten a chance to check up on the ‘net. Your video hit just over three million views on YouTube before the servers went out.”
“Gee, thanks,” I offered, not really knowing how to feel about that.
“Can you confirm your claim? ‘It’s in the sugar’ doesn’t sound very scientific,” a different male voice rasped over the radio, this one with a southern twang.
“Well, I can confirm two cases of instant conversion after ingestion of a chocolate bar and some syrup in a coffee shop,” I bit out, somewhat annoyed. “And we had someone get ill after drinking ice tea. Make of that what you will, but from what… Kevin and Dave, right?”
“Yup.”
“Kevin and Dave said, and what our medic told me, highly processed foods seem to be problematic.” Pausing, I cleared my throat. “Remember when a couple of years ago some health nuts started complaining that high fructose corn syrup is in everything now? Looks like they were right, and it’s killing us off one after the other right now.”
Silence fell, until another voice—this one female—spoke up.
“Shit.”
“That about sums it up, yeah,” I replied.
“You said your medic?” Southern guy asked. “You with the military?”
I didn’t know what to reply, and I didn’t miss the interested glance that Gerry shot my way.
“I’m not sure if we even still have a military,” I finally settled on saying. “But I’m with some guys who know how to handle themselves in a tight spot.”
“So you got away clean from the city?” Kevin again.
“We lost…” I stopped, counting in my head but coming up blank. “I don’t know. Ten people? I didn’t even know all their names.” I did remember Thompson and Brad, though. Considering that almost a day had passed since we had left them behind, it was a safe bet that they were either dead now, or didn’t remember themselves anymore. Or so I presumed. The zombies didn’t look like they had much sense of their former selves left.
“We lost eleven,” a hoarse voice replied behind me. Looking up, I saw Nate make his way across the room until he stopped behind my chair. I made as if to get up, but he shook his head, biting off a wince as he leaned into the chair back to support himself. He was pale but no longer as deathly white as when Martinez had finished bandaging him, but his lips still held a slightly blue tint.
“Who’s that?” the nosy Southern guy wanted to know.
“Who I am isn’t important anymore,” Nate replied, the hint of a smile playing around his lips. “But the name’s Nate Miller. And I do remember all of their names.”
That vague feeling of guilt that came and went was back, depending on how much else demanded my attention, but the quick squeeze of his fingers on my shoulder made me shake it off again. In more ways than one I got that the gesture meant for me to move on, not just when we were running through throngs of undead.
“Does anyone know exactly what they are?” I asked. There was no telling when I’d get another chance to talk to someone who might know more than we’d learned so far.
“You mean besides the obvious?” the woman quipped.
“No shit, Sherlock,” I replied. “We spent the last two days out there, running, hiding, and shooting our way clear. Trust me when I say that we know that they look, reek, and act like zombies.”
Nate snorted, but the radio remained silent for several pointed seconds.
“Still waiting for first contact,” Kevin admitted.
“I saw some in my neighbor’s yard,” Nosy Guy offered. The others kept their likely similar experiences to themselves.
“You’re as close to experts on that as anyone else out there,” Gerry summed up the obvious. I wondered if I should report our findings, but, really, none of that went beyond what anyone who’d ever seen a zombie flick already knew. Except for the fact that they were damn smart—a clear disadvantage.
“Don’t let the fact that they look like they’re brain dead fool you,” Nate said, pretty much reading my thoughts. “We’ve seen some use tools, and they know how to get into cars, at least broken down ones. Not sure how well they can track us by sight, but they react to sound. So only shoot if you can’t avoid it.
“You killed some of ‘em, too, doc?” Nosy Guy again.
Exhaling slowly, I felt the knot deep in my gut contract further, but before I could reply, Nate answered for me.
“Bree’s just as tough as the rest of us—don’t let that fancy degree fool you. If you turn into one of them, don’t get near her when she’s wielding a blunt weapon. Or an edged one, for that matter.”
I rolled my eyes at the smirk he directed at me, half-tempted to poke his bandaged side with a finger.
“Do we know anything about the spread of the epidemic?” I asked before anyone could whip out the glorious war tales. “I mean, locally, across the country, worldwide?”
More silence followed, but this time it seemed as if it was simply a matter of no one wanting to voice what we all knew.
“It’s everywhere,” Kevin supplied. “Europe went dark same time as us, but Africa, Asia, and South America aren’t doing much better from the few messages that got out. They might not have been hit as hard as us in the initial infection with everyone getting sick, but it was enough that secondary infection from bites is spreading rapidly.”
“Yeah, we’re all fucked,” the lady summed it all up. I couldn’t help but picture a scared seventeen-year-old trying to sound brave.
A buzzer went off on the table, and when I looked at Gerry, he shrugged.
“I always let the generator run for an hour in the morning, just after five.” To the mic, he asked, “Anyone got anything else to say?” A chorus of reluctant negatives chimed in. “Then we’ll meet again tomorrow, same time. Hope you’re all still around,” Gerry offered.
“Good luck out there,” Kevin wished us before he signed off as the last one after the others—reminding me that our momentary safety was only temporary.
Gerry switched off his equipment, then turned to us, his eyes briefly flitting to Nate but remaining on my face.
“Y
ou can stay for a few days, of course,” he said. “We have some food stored away in the pantry, and at the very least we can offer you shelter. But—“
“But we weren’t planning on staying, anyway,” Nate replied, sparing him any further words. Gerry nodded after a pause, then got to his feet.
“I need to shut down the generator. I’m sure that Maude has breakfast ready by now.”
Nate looked after him until he had left the room.
“Sounds like an idea.”
He lingered for another moment, making me wonder if there was anything else he wanted to say, but he turned around and went back into the kitchen without making another sound. Staring at the mic, I wondered if I’d ever hear from any of the others again.
Chapter 10
We set out mid-morning, after everyone had had the chance to get some hot oatmeal into them, wash up, and put on some fresh clothes, provided they had any. Rooting through my pack, I found a few of the items I was sure that I’d grabbed from the sports goods store missing, and a whole lot of additions. I didn’t know how to feel about the fact that the Ice Queen—who else?—had stashed no less than ten pistol and five rifle magazines at the very bottom, all of them empty. When I’d pulled one of them out, holding it between the very tips of my fingers, Burns had informed me about their state of emptiness, and the fact that we’d need them once we managed to stock up on more ammo. Or make our own. That this was even an option was new to me, but it was by far not the last thing that I didn’t know about guns.
Saying our goodbyes had been a quick affair. Gerry and Maude looked fittingly apologetic about evicting us, but not particularly sorry. I couldn’t hold it against them; I wouldn’t have been ecstatic to house our group, either, if I’d still been pretending that everything would return to normal in a week or two. I wasn’t sure that—even knowing the facts thanks to the radio contact—reality had had time to set in for them yet. Then again, with only a handful of rifle rounds and neither Maude nor Gerry able to make a run for it, that was probably for the best.
I still felt numb and kind of empty as we stepped over the bridge spanning the gurgling creek, back out into the real world.
We’d walked about a mile or so on that same road we’d been traveling the evening before when Burns caught up with me. So far, he’d been ignoring me, but I’d noticed that since our little impromptu surgery session, he was looking at me with different eyes. Apparently, not even puking my guts out afterward had scratched what street cred I’d gained. Martinez was still a little distant, but I could tell that he was behaving much the same. I didn’t know how much they knew about my connection to Nate, but cutting him up and helping stitch him back together seemed to have elevated me to the rank of “moderately useful,” thus worthy of attention.
I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing when Burns held out a knife in a holster sheath to me. I took it, somewhat conflicted what to do with it. When he flashed me a bright grin, I couldn’t help but frown.
“And what keeps me from stabbing you with that right this very second?”
“Lack of proper knife fighting training,” he jeered, reminding me a lot of Nate right there. “Then again, considering what I’ve seen of you with edged weapons, I’m not sure you wouldn’t gut me, anyway.”
Shaking my head, I wondered if I should put it in my pack, but as soon as I made as if to shrug the backpack off, he stopped me.
“See those straps? That goes around your thigh. No use to you if you can’t get to it.”
“Why would I want to get to it fast? I have my bat,” I offered.
“And what do you do once a zombie has torn it out of your pretty little hands and is coming for your throat? You can still ram the knife right into the skull through the eyes.” He paused, and that grin took a mean twist. “Works just the same on living shitheads that get a little too close to you. If you’re on your back and he’s right above you, he thinks he has you were he wants you. But really, you have him where you can most effectively stab him without giving him room to fend you off.”
The mental image of that made what was left of the bruises on my face give a brief twinge, but I did my best to ignore it. My feet hurt way worse. After a few moments, I stopped, buckling the knife around my right thigh. It was weird to have something strapped to my leg, but the way the holster was built, it didn’t hinter me much as I took a few experimental steps.
“Funny that you’d use that example,” I said, totally not fishing for information.
“Let’s just say that Andrej told that tall tale night before last about how you got those love bites around your neck. Should have believed him after watching you go after Smith with that cake knife, but I guess it took last night to completely sell me on that idea.”
My free hand went up to the collar of my jacket, open just enough to let a little air in—and put the fading strangulation marks on full display.
“I think you all have a completely wrong picture of me,” I finally said when nothing else came to my mind.
“Nah, I think we have it exactly right,” he said, leaving me to my thoughts as he sped up to walk with Cho. I stared at the massive pack he was lugging around with him, easily weighing twice as much as mine. As much as I hated favoritism, I was glad that they didn’t expect me to do more than I was capable of.
Although, remembering last night, the way my repertoire of what I was able to do was rapidly expanding, it was only a matter of time until we’d all be even.
As little as Nate’s decision to cross the Interstate had made sense at the time, I had to admit that it hadn’t been the worst—ignoring the loss of life. Maybe we were just hitting a lucky streak, but for the next couple of hours we barely saw a zombie anywhere, and those few that were too close to leave to their own, sometimes cannibalistic devices were easily taken care of. Back in Maude’s kitchen, I’d gotten a chance to look over Andrej’s maps. He and Nate had taken the time to mark areas with high population density, using a fat, red Sharpie. I’d jokingly remarked why they didn’t just strike out the entire East Coast, and the looks I’d gotten for that had been way too close to confirmation than I liked.
Three days into this, I harbored no doubts anymore that Nate’s insistence to bail as quickly as possible was probably the only reason why all of us were still alive.
With the landscape turning to evening out toward the west, it was easier now to find a route that led us far around towns to avoid most of the critical zones. We slept in a barn once; another time, a small thicket of trees up on a hill that let us see the entire area around us for miles in all directions had to do. We found water aplenty, but food was soon starting to run out. My first instinct would have been to ration what we had between us, but Nate shot me down before I could even suggest it.
“With them all running on protein and fat in abundance, we can’t risk not having enough fuel to run or fight our way out of a tight spot,” he informed me—and for good measure shoved another can of tuna at me.
So it came that on day six we were down to two cans of soup and a pack of potato chips that Steve had been hiding, and our fountain of post-apocalyptic deeds got one experience richer—looting from the dead.
Or at least what they left behind in their cars, which was only a little less gruesome, it turned out.
Keeping to small country roads whenever possible, we had mostly missed what else was going on over the last couple of days. Yet a few miles west of Cadiz, Ohio, before we got to the next Interstate obstacle, we finally had to face the music. I couldn’t say how large Piedmont was, but from where we were looking at it, there were just a couple of houses along the street, with a lake to the south. A few zombies were out and about the main road, but they’d clearly already finished with the pile of maybe ten cars at the very eastern end of the village, what was left of an accident when the last living inhabitants had likely tried to make a run for it. Crows and other carrion eaters were hard at work picking what remained of the bones clean. Furniture, clothes, and other small
knickknacks remained strewn about, and as we drew closer, I thought I saw a raccoon make off with a loaf of bread. The stench was worse than the sight of the bodies by far, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience either way.
With four people on lookout to see what the shamblers down the road were up to, the rest of us descended on the cars, finishing their work. Going through a dead person’s things might have appeared morbid to me a week ago, but with hunger gnawing on my insides, my inhibitions were pretty much nonexistent. With no idea when we’d run out of time, we simply pulled all suitcases that were still intact and closed out of the cars and left them in a heap to grab quickly later, and instead sifted through what else lay in and around the cars.
All of them, without a fail, had car seats in the back rows, and my favorite must have been the one where the torn off bottom half of what used to be a little girl—judging from the remains of a frayed pink sundress—were rotting away, half-dessicated from the heat baking down on the car for the past week.
My mind screamed at me that I shouldn’t have felt like eating after that, but as soon as we were well back in the trees a good mile away from the road, I wolfed down mushy, half-rotten apples and three packs of crackers like there was no tomorrow. Maybe there really wasn’t.
By the time we reached I-77, we were all hungry again, what little foodstuff we’d found long gone. It was really annoying how little edible food that wasn’t wrapped in paper bags and unsuited for consumption for so many reasons now people had bothered to take with them. I half-expected that Nate would have us make another attempt right there on the highway, but while there were cars aplenty, we stuck to the underpass that thankfully turned out to be relatively free of things that were out to eat us. We still had to try our luck on the other side as the zombies might not have seen us come closer, but they sure saw us leave, and I didn’t have to worry about missing my cardio workout for another day.
It was when we drew close to Dresden—home of the world’s largest basket, for anyone who still gave a damn—when Nate had us stop in sight of the suspension bridge over the river that was the natural border of the town. Burns and Campbell had just returned from their quick recon trip, letting us know that the road ahead on this side of the river was clear.
The Green Fields Series Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 38
