Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending

by Brian Stewart

  The second time the vehicle slowed to a bumpy, grinding halt, they had sat there idling for almost ten minutes with the rear door closed. Distant, muted voices seemed to be arguing—some in English, some in the heavily accented Russian—until with a screeching grind, the door was rolled up and the ramp pulled down. A baker’s dozen procession of figures marched up and into the cargo area. Men . . . women . . . no children that he saw. Tourists, vacationers, stranded college students—who knew. Outside, he caught a glimpse of two people huddled near the front of what looked like a hotel’s courtesy shuttle. Standing next to them was the same cigarette smoking Russian man that he had dealt with in what seemed to be a lifetime ago. The footsteps on the metal ramp combined with the engine’s low rumble blocked most of the conversation from his ears, but he did catch the repeated words “Not sick, just a flu . . . not bad sick . . . please”

  “Nyet.”

  It was punctuated with a cloud of exhaled smoke, and the metallic slide racking of the pump shotgun in the second Russian’s grip.

  The ramp was slid back and locked in place, and then the shotgun wielding guard vaulted into the back, pulled the door shut and took up position on a low, wooden stool. Igniting a cigarette of his own, he kept the lighter’s flame burning long enough to gaze at the assembly.

  “No talking . . . cross border soon . . . Shhh. You talk, I throw off truck, yes?”

  A muffled cough accompanied the nod from the younger Spanish woman.

  The third loading of passengers brought nine more people on board. Most of them were so over bundled against the cold that he couldn’t tell ages or sex. All of them were adults, though. Two more stops occurred moments later, but no one got on at either location. The last loading brought seventeen more riders. Two adults—both of them young women—and fifteen children, all dressed almost identically. Black pants, black shoes, and heavy, expensive looking woolen parkas. One of the ladies pleaded softly—it was English but heavily accented with French—with the shotgun guard, begging to be allowed to bring some blankets. Several drags on the cigarette pulsed the guard’s face bright orange as he considered.

  “You give kiss, I give blanket.” A trail of sparkling embers raced through the open doorway as the stub was flicked to the ground near a large pile of suitcases.

  “What?”

  “You give kiss, I give blanket. One kiss, one blanket.”

  A momentary shudder, visible even through the heavy parka, passed across the woman’s shoulders.

  With his free hand, the guard reached up and grabbed the door, pulling it down a foot before stopping. “Da sveedanya . . . Goodbye to blanket.”

  “Wait . . . please . . .”

  The door dropped another foot.

  “OK . . . Oui . . . OUI!” The girl stood on tiptoes and leaned toward the Russian guard, aiming for his cheek. At the last second the guard shifted his stance and locked his right arm behind her neck, crushing her lips to his. Her muffled struggling didn’t seem to concern the guard, and he held her there for a solid ten seconds.

  His grip finally relaxed, and the young lady pushed away from the guard, almost tripping over another passenger in an effort to maintain her balance.

  “You are animal,” she spat. It had come out in three syllables, an-NEE-mal.

  The guard chuckled and lit another cigarette, gesturing down the ramp. “You go get blanket.” A quick glance at the luminous dial of his watch preceded several taps of the timepiece with his cigarette laden fingers. “Leave . . . one minute.”

  The woman’s boots stomped hurriedly down the ramp toward the pile of luggage. As she defiantly gathered up an entire armful of blankets, the gloomy darkness slowly lightened with the approach of another vehicle. It was coming from the opposite direction, and when it finally neared, its headlights pushed the night back far enough to illuminate a large road sign. It was marked as Canadian Highway 2, Red Coat Trail. East. That meant they were heading west, not south towards the United States. At his side, his youngest daughter tossed fitfully in her sleep. An instinctive caress of his hand through her hair encountered a burning fever erupting across her forehead.

  Chapter 17

  A sweep through the rest of the warehouse came up uneventful, so after checking in on the radio, they spent a few extra minutes moving pallets to partially cover some potential entry points on the back wall. It wasn’t perfect, and certainly wouldn’t keep out anything that was determined to get in, but at least they’d be able to tell if something had disturbed their impromptu barricade. For a final touch—temporary at least—Michelle and Sam kept guard while Eric backed the forklift out and then repositioned it against the sliding door, wedging it shut. The missing radio had been brought out, but for now, the three bodies were left inside.

  “OK, I think we’re done here.”

  Sam looked around, searching through the long shadows brought to life with his flashlight. “I hope so. What now?”

  “Let’s head back to the store. I’d like to do a couple more laps around the area in my truck, and then I suppose were going to have to sit down with everybody from the campground and figure out our next move.”

  The quick journey back to Eric’s truck, followed by several more laps around the marina brought no encounters, and the three of them got out and leaned wearily against the closed tailgate as the adrenaline high began to wear off.

  “Walter, Amy . . . as far as we can tell, we’re clear of any immediate threats. We took care of the feral and . . . other things . . . so if we’re going to have our meeting with everybody, I’d suggest we do it now while the window is open.”

  “I heard a lot of shootin’ down there, is everybody OK?” Walter’s gruff voice came back immediately.

  “Yeah, we’re all OK,” Eric returned, “but I imagine the boat warehouse is going to need a lot of holes patched so it doesn’t leak.”

  “I don’t care about that, as long as we don’t have to patch any holes in one of you.” After a brief pause, Walter continued, “I think that we’re pretty much ready to go up here . . . Amy, are you ready?”

  Amy’s voice came over the radio, almost overwhelmed by the chatter in the background. It was an affirmative ‘Yes’ with an unspoken but easily discernible ‘thank goodness.’

  “All right then. Eric, will you have somebody drive my truck up here? I don’t think all of us can’t fit in the Mule.”

  Eric swiveled his head and flashlight toward the lake. Barely visible was the top six inches of Walter’s new truck poking out from its aquatic resting place. After a brief moment’s contemplation, Eric handed his radio to Sam. “You borrowed it, you tell him.”

  Chapter 18

  Dehydrated flakes of coconut avalanched down the sides of the muffin-like, cellophane wrapped dessert that was serving as Eric’s supper. The needed distraction of mental arithmetic brought the conclusion that only about thirty percent of the tiny flakes actually made it into his mouth. The rest decorated his shirt, lap, and the floor in front of him. They were surprisingly slippery, and Eric’s boot slid in a haphazard figure eight pattern as Sam, Amy, and Doc Collins finished up getting the crowd settled and ready. An impromptu head table had been set up along the back edge of the store, and the crowd, most of them seated on the floor due to lack of chairs, jostled nervously. Thirty-seven faces—some of which he recognized—waited with a mixture of impatience, sorrow, or fear in the dim light cast by the solitary camping lantern. The low hiss from the pressurized gas in the lantern reminded Eric of a distant, hidden snake.

  Scott and Thompson had volunteered to stay on the roof as guards, and Bernice, Rebecca, and the older couple—Bucky and Frederica—were still up at the house. Both locations had been given a GMRS walkie-talkie that was set on monitor so they could follow the meeting. A third radio locked in broadcast mode sat on the head table.

  Thirty-seven faces. There were more—just a few though—on the other side of the makeshift cloth divider that separated the bait and tackle wing from the grocery wing. Tho
se missing from the visible crowd were a pair of sleeping children, and four traumatized parents who had opted out of the meeting, lost in grief or despair over missing loved ones. Something in that thought bothered Eric, although he couldn’t seem to put his finger on it at the moment.

  Shifting from coconut flake math to real numbers brought Eric back to reality. Thirty-seven people on the floor, plus another half dozen behind the divider brought it to forty-three. Add that to what . . . another dozen? Thirteen? No, there was more than that, and he began a mental checklist as Walter scooted past, grumbling as he made notes in a dog-eared tablet. Another moment of concentration, aided by several finger counts brought Eric’s total to seventeen additional people. With a frown, he flipped two more fingers upright—Uncle Andy and Emily. Nineteen. That brought their grand total up to sixty-two people.

  Before his mind dropped into logistics mode, he was nudged from the side. “What was it, just a few days ago that you were crouched down right about there, searching for your baby bottle pacifier of hot sauce?”

  He smiled at Michelle and nodded, “And then you showed up, and the world got turned upside down.”

  Eric watched as Michelle gave a short laugh and ran her fingers through her hair. “Leave it to a redhead to wreck your world.”

  “Wreck . . . or rock?” he shot back with a smirk.

  “You know what they say,” she beamed, “you can sleep with a blond, and you can sleep with a brunette, but you’ll never get any sleep with a redhead.” A not so subtle wink followed.

  A rapid series of taps drew their attention to the table. “OK people,” Walter said, “let’s get this started.” He turned toward Michelle and Eric, “You ready?”

  Eric nodded, and then turned to Michelle, “You’re up first, go get em’ tiger.” He heard her sigh in response as he turned and walked over to the door, positioning himself as a guard.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, “I think I’ve introduced myself to most of you at some point over the past few days, but for those of you who might have missed it, I am Officer Owens . . . Michelle . . .”

  “An officer of what?” The voice cut in from one of the groups that they had already pegged as potential trouble.

  “I’m a Federal agent with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.”

  “Why are you here? It’s not like we’re being attacked by a school of trout.”

  Michelle ignored the man and continued with re-introductions of Walter, Eric, and the others. Turning back to the crowd, she said, “Let me start this meeting by asking Dave Fischer to say a prayer.”

  Preacher Dave stood and bowed his head. “Heavenly Father, we come to You again in our hour of need, trusting You to guide us with wisdom and courage in the times to come. Our world is suffering a great loss, and Your people are crying out for deliverance. Our hearts are heavy, Lord, with the pain of missing loved ones, and an uncertain future. Father, I humbly ask for Your reassurance and strength to settle on each person here. Please surround us with Your mighty hand and shelter us with Your presence. Let Your light shine in the darkness, and let us be a people guided by Your Holy Spirit. In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, I ask this. Amen.”

  Several echoes of “Amen” rebounded from the crowd.

  Michelle’s face took on a serious, no nonsense expression as she recapped what had happened earlier that evening, and then she turned the table over to Doc Collins.

  Doc finished up a round of paper shuffling with Callie before addressing the audience. “First things first. Many of you from the campground have already gone through a round of filling out paperwork on your medical history in case something happens to you. Most of that paperwork is back at the campground. Please humor me and take just a minute to fill out this much abbreviated form. My assistant will collect them when you’re done, and then I will give you, to the best of my medical knowledge, a rundown of what we might be facing . . . although I’ll warn you that we don’t have much to go on.”

  Several sets of eyes rolled at the announcement of more paperwork, but in a short time it had been distributed, completed, and collected. Eric watched as Callie retreated to the table’s edge and began to sort the forms. As she did, Doc stepped to the front of the crowd.

  “Let me first give you a general rundown of what we suspect. Medically speaking, I cannot give you the answers that many of you are seeking. I can’t give you them, because I’m still seeking them as well. But here is what I can tell you . . . first off, I have no clue whether this is caused by a bacteria, a virus, or something else entirely. I don’t even know what ‘this’ is. I can only speak semi-intelligently on the symptoms and progression of the sickness, and even then it comes from our limited resources and observations.” He took a deep breath and continued as Callie began entering the form data into her tablet.

  “Contrary to many of the rumors floating around, infected people are not ‘zombies.’ They are not dead. They still have a heartbeat, and obviously, mobility and some semblance of thought processing and reasoning. Some observations seem to indicate that many of the infected are functioning at more of a base level drive. Other infected, however, seem to retain a higher level of cognitive function. It also appears that this pathogen affects different people in different ways. Before I delve into that area, let me clarify this—and please listen carefully—we have absolutely zero, repeat, zero reason to think, based on our observations so far, that infected people have any control over their actions. As far as we can tell, they exhibit no pre-infection moral restraint. And before you ask, no one that we have seen, or heard about, or in any way have any knowledge of, has exhibited a reversal of symptoms. In other words, once somebody is infected, there is no cure or help that we know of.”

  Several hands went in the air, and Doc pointed at one of them, a dark haired lady sitting alone near the edge of the crowd. “What did you mean about moral restraint?” she asked.

  “That means that if your great grandmother who loves you dearly, or your best friend, or spouse, or a child that you gave birth to becomes infected, by every account and observation we have, they will in no way recognize you. They will not reason with you. They will not listen to you. What they will do, however, is not pretty. We have all seen the results of that.” Several more hands went up, but Doc shook his head, “Let me finish what little I have before I take any questions.”

  Eric shifted his gaze around the room, partially amazed how quiet the crowd had remained so far. He watched as Callie stood up with several papers in her hand, and in the moment of silence before Doc continued, she called out several names. Skipping through the crowded floor brought her over to several people that had raised their hand when their name had been called. Eric watched as she pointed to a space or spaces on the medical form, and then saw her jot down a sentence or two in response to what ever had been left blank. She circulated throughout the crowd as Doc continued.

  “The progression of this infection . . . no wait, let me back up.” He took a deep breath and looked around the room. “We are not sure how this infection is spread for certain. We can make some fairly logical conclusions, however. Direct contact with infected tissue or substances seems to be likely, at least if they are somehow introduced into the body—a bite for example. One of those we lost from the campground, a lady named Brenda, had a copious amount of infected blood sprayed in her face, eyes, and mouth as she battled to help save the children on their bicycles. You’ve already heard that story. Are there other ways the sickness can pass from one person to another? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. And the million dollar question—is it airborne? Another doctor that Officer Owens encountered over at Fort Hammer seemed to think that it was airborne. Again, we just don’t know for sure.” Doc cleared his throat and took a sip of water from a clear plastic cup before continuing.

  “Regardless of how it is actually spread, we do seem to have a slightly better understanding of the progression that follows when the pathogen is introduced. I need to clarify
this, however. What I’m about to tell you is based primarily on our personal observations. We could be totally wrong.”

  “Doctor Collins,” a heavyset man near the front interjected, “I don’t want to come across like a jerk, but we’re tired. All of us—bone tired, scared, worried—so can you just get to the point without all of the weasel words and disclaimers? I mean, most of us have already figured out that nobody really knows anything for sure, so just tell us what you can. No sugar coating, OK?”

  Doc nodded. “When someone is exposed and infected, they seem to develop a high fever. Our very limited observation opportunities have put this initial stage running the gamut anywhere from about thirty minutes to upwards of ten hours. There are further reasons to believe that this ‘incubation period’ could last substantially longer, or in some cases, substantially shorter, before fever sets in. Once someone shows evidence of a high, or rapidly spiking temperature, the next stage approaches quickly—usually within an hour. This second stage seems to be fatal to roughly twenty to forty percent of the infected. We’ve observed in almost all cases a muting, or graying, of the skin tone. Our experience, limited as it is so far, has also encountered a brief period of weak, rapid heartbeats and further spiking of body temperatures. Stage three, or maybe the end stage of two, results in what is apparently an influx of ruptured blood vessels in the victim’s eye. Stage four and beyond is where the infected person becomes . . . like those people lying out there.” He indicated toward the door near Eric, and the bodies that everybody knew were sprawled beyond.