He scanned the horizon. His position offered him the ability to see a couple of miles. Nothing was coming his way so he took a deep breath and thought to himself, no time like the present. As his heart began to rev up again, he chambered a round and looked at the dark metal tool. The forty-five-caliber bullet inside would likely take the top of his head off. He’d be just one more horrid sight in a country overflowing with them. He smelled the gun’s barrel, taking in its oily, bittersweet metal scent, and then slipped it carefully into his mouth, this time avoiding tapping his teeth. He thought of his grandmother before she had turned and he dearly hoped that she would be waiting for him on the other side. Then he heard footsteps. Running footsteps. They were coming from the North. He slipped the gun out of his mouth, tapping his top teeth hard, adding more tears to his eyes, and he swore. He squeezed his blurred eyes shut in frustration. Damn it. His friends must have been attacked. Now the Fiends were coming his way.
He pulled his legs to his chest and crouched on the balls of his feet while trying to blink his vision clear. When he judged that the first Fiend was no more than twenty-feet away, he hopped up, whipped his arm around the tree and fired.
Nikki pulled up short and skidded to a stunned halt. She had heard sonic boom as the bullet wiz past her ear. She bent over breathing hard while looking with incredulity at her friend. “That’s - how - you treat someone - who's trying - to save - your life?”
Jon dropped the gun. “Oh my God, did I hit you?”
“No. Good thing you’re a shitty shot.”
He could see the rest of the group down the road, still running, but slowing their pace. “Are you being chased?”
“No.” She stood up stretching her lungs with a deep breath. “I’m trying to help you.”
“What? How?”
She walked up to him and kissed him full on the mouth before he could react and pull back. She then picked up his pistol and turned the stunned man around back toward Moscow. “Come on. I’ll explain while we jog. We’ve still got time.”
As they came around the bend in the road, revealing the dam and the beginning of the ruined town, everyone remained skeptical of Nikki's idea, including Jon.
Nikki countered, “You know that the Army perfected exchange transfusions for severe malaria, particularly for those suffering Cerebral Malaria.”
Susan said, “They’re not even remotely similar diseases. Malaria is caused by a parasite.”
Decker, the team’s blood analyst jumped in, “She may have something, though. Like Malaria, the FND-z bacterium rides on red blood cells, right? So swapping out Jon’s blood with Nikki's not only removes a lot of the bacteria, but it also replaces the diseased conduit with one that should theoretically already have antibodies ready to fight off the infection.”
“What he said,” nodded Nikki.
Teddy said, “Wait. So you’re talking about taking out Jon’s blood and replacing it with Nikki's?”
“Exactly,” said Nikki.
“Gross,” said Amanda, making a face.
“So what do you do for blood, Nikki?” asked Teddy.
Christy got on board, her voice rising with excitement. This was what she did. This was stuff she understood. It wasn’t running in sheer terror through an unknown countryside. “We hope that there is a stock of O negative in the aid station’s blood bank. If there’s no O, Nikki, there’s no way you can donate and not die.”
That’s when Ben noticed that the front door of the house they had taken shelter in the night before. It was open. “I remember closing that.”
They all followed his look. The day was gray and overcast. The inside of the house was dark. The shotgun hallway bisected the first floor, leading straight to the back. This gave the adolescent male Fiend plenty of room to build up a full head of steam as it charged out the front door, fierce eyes locked directly on Amanda Costas.
Ben, who had unconsciously lowered his shotgun to hip-height, was surprised when his finger pulled the trigger. The un-aimed blast went wide right, but a couple of pellets of buckshot hit the Fiend in the shoulder, spinning it slightly and throwing off its angle of charge. It was just enough to give a screaming Amanda Costas time to run the other way.
As the thing passed him, Steven Costas yanked out his Persian scimitar and hacked at the creature, giving it a wide gash across the back. The monster barely flinched, its sole focus remaining on the little girl.
Jon stuck out a leg and tripped it and then blew the top half of its head off with the Smith & Wesson.
As the shocked group checked themselves for blood splatters they were suddenly jarred by Amanda’s renewed screaming. She had run to the wooded far side of the road, only to be met by four more Fiends scrambling through the burned underbrush. It was a classic ambush in the style of wolves: One flushed out the prey and the others chased it down. They went for the smallest and easiest to capture. This pack had been working together for a while. Not one of them was older than eighteen.
Nikki aimed, but had to release the trigger, the Fiends right on top of the girl. Amanda had her legs swiped out from under her and she fell hard, tumbling and scraping on the rough asphalt, her breath knocked free, cutting off her scream. The snarling, shrieking, things grabbed her up like a rag doll and started running back into the woods. The group of survivors charged after them, running as fast as they could.
Jon and Steven ran the fastest, both men holding their swords at their sides. Then more Fiends were coming through the woods. They could hear their whoops and howls echoing through the burned trees. Nikki fell to one knee and started firing, taking careful aim with each shot. Ben stopped as well and sprayed buckshot at three that were coming from the right. Then the Fiends stopped. A higher whoop was heard above the others and the second group of Fiends turned and ran back into the denser foliage.
Jon and Steven had almost caught up with the three who were running with the struggling little girl when the monsters simply dropped her and kept running. Steven threw his sword aside and dove to the ground, pulling his baby into his chest. The child’s sobs were only broken by the deep breaths needed to make more. Jon stood above them, his sword and pistol ready for a second assault, but the Fiends kept retreating into the woods. A hasty inspection revealed that the girl was unbitten, but her many abrasions made it difficult to tell for sure.
“Dad…Daddy…Daddy. I don’t want to be out here anymore. I…I…want mommy. I…I…want to go home.”
“I know, Baby. I know.”
Jon remained focused, saying, “Steven, we gotta get back on the road, back to the school.” He picked up Steven’s sword while the man stood, still holding his daughter.
The group fast-walked the rest of the way, this time without the distraction of medical debate. Everyone felt eyes watching them, the hairs standing up on the backs of their necks, their eyes dilated, providing maximum visual information.
It stood with Its pack, hidden in the tree line, watching. Having already saved these Others from the great fire, making them stand hip deep in the much feared lake while the world burned around them, It had stopped the struggle for the little Fresh One; too many Others were dying. There was plenty of food to be found in the forest. The fire had killed many creatures, making them easier to eat than a raw Fresh One. There was no hurry. It could sense from the infant Other that It carried, that more Others were coming from the South. It would wait until there were reinforcements.
A skinny male looked at this female Other that led them, the one that held the baby with the big eyes, and tightened its muscles with frustration. The infant Other had entered its mind once more – controlling It through the one that led them. Made it stop chasing. Drop its squealing prize. It had it. Had the little Fresh One, its thick young skin smelling so good, the sex of it calling to its loins. It and the Others that had grabbed the Fresh One would have played with it until dark and then finally feasted on its sweet flesh. Then the infant Other made them drop it. It looked with hatred at the infant Other. Its
mouth filled with bile as it followed the female that led them back into the deeper wood.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Barricade
Before doing anything else, they had to sweep the school again. Mercifully, it was still empty. They gathered once more in the school’s panic ridden foyer. “All right,” said Nikki. “This place is too big and we are too few to defend it. We set up shop in the cafeteria. The blood’s there and so is the food. We tie the doors shut, make sure the windows are locked.”
“Lock the windows?” barked Decker, “You think glass is going to stop these motherfuckers?”
“We cover the windows and work in the kitchen, staying out of sight.”
“How long does a blood exchange take?” asked Teddy.
Susan looked at the still shaken group. “It’ll be a few hours. We have to set things up and then it has to be done incrementally, small amounts, a few minutes at a time.”
“No offense, Jon,” said Aaron, “but this is a crazy waste of time. We’d be most of the way to our next stop by now. Instead, we’ve locked ourselves into this place where we know there’s infected outside. With all of that shooting, who knows how many others might be drawn here. If Nikki is immune - great. We can test her blood when we get back to Canada. Find out what makes her tic.”
“I agree with you,” said Jon, “You’ve lost valuable time. I don’t matter a bit compared to the knowledge that you guys are carrying. We should just turn back around and keep you moving.”
Aaron gave a satisfied nod, scanning his fellow scientist for back-up. The group as a whole seemed unsure how to proceed.
“Look, my feelings for Jon aside,” said Nikki, “we were kidding ourselves. There’s no way we were going to walk up that road and survive. That last assault should be proof enough.”
Tran said, “I gotta agree with Nikki. We know that they, the Army, are out looking for us. We’ve got all we need here. I say we go up to the roof and lay out an SOS with some of these sleeping bags and whatnot. We can write CDC right next to it.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Nikki. “I’m glad I didn’t shoot you, Mr. Tran.”
“Feeling’s mutual, Ms. Rosen.”
They found the roof access via a ladder in a janitorial storeroom. Tran and Ben dragged up the brightest colored sleeping bags they could find and started laying out the signal, holding it down with textbooks. The rest of the group started settling in. First they confirmed that there was O negative stored in the refrigerator; unfortunately, there wasn’t enough for Nikki to get a full transfusion. The result would be a partial transfusion for her. They’d have to top Jon up with A (his blood type) once they’d taken what they could from Nikki.
Decker, Christy and Susan set up the transfusion space, culling their equipment from the overwhelmingly rancid gymnasium. Nikki, Jon, Aaron, Steven and the kids went to work covering the cafeteria windows with sheets of craft paper and then pulling the blinds so that everyone could move in and out of the kitchen without being observed. They then turned over all of the tables and chairs and shoved them in front of the windows, piling them as high as they could, creating a tangled obstacle course of sorts. If the Fiends wanted in through the windows, they would be slowed down, becoming easier targets. There was one problem that was unsolvable: their minimal supply of ammunition; they’d used up half their reserves. A concerted attack would result in eventual overwhelming odds.
Ben had decided to remain on the roof to keep the first watch. He was uncomfortable with all of these folks anyway. His people were gone, and he found himself adrift in his own backyard. Staying focused on a mission was the only thing that kept him from deep depression. His faith had been deeply shaken, and he found that sitting on the roof with that big sky overhead gave him the time and the space to confront his merciless god.
Nikki realized that she had dumped the pilot’s radio with the rest of her gear up the road. She cursed her haste and thoughtlessness. It was dumb things like that that got people killed. Everyone tried to offer forgiveness with the exception of Aaron, who just about had a fit. It was Susan who reminded him that they had all dumped their gear in haste. “It could have been any one of us.”
“Bullshit!” yelled Aaron, “She started running off with practically no explanation! What were we supposed to do?”
Everyone chose to ignore this melt down, cutting the man some slack, despite his annoying whine. After all, they were frightened out of their wits too. The anxiety was overwhelming, even for the most resolute among them.
They had one logistical problem: the janitor’s room with the roof ladder was over near the gymnasium at the opposite end of the school. If there was a break in and they had to seal themselves inside the cafeteria, the person on the roof would be cut off. A solution didn’t present itself and they decided that there were only so many contingencies that they could handle. They had a blood exchange to do, with no time left to waste.
Nikki and Jon were guided to lie down on separate cots. As the catheters were inserted, great care was taken to avoid exposure to Jon’s blood. They figured he had about nine hours left, tops, before he would start experiencing the fever. Of course he had been running around after Fiends, barricading the cafeteria - no way to calculate if the extra exercise had any negative effect, shortening the window. The one hope they held onto was the time it took for the bacteria to actually enter the nervous system. It was the last step in the infectious assault, when the brain began to be permanently altered. If they could arrest some of the onslaught by removing Jon’s infected red cells, perhaps what was left of his own immune reaction would jump in along with Nikki's, giving him even more time. The whole concept was throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what would stick, so they strapped Jon to the cot in the likely event that nothing did. Nikki promised that this time, she would be the one to end it if he succumbed.
While they finished prepping, Aaron calmed himself by pedantically waxing on for the laymen in the room. “This process is also used to help patients with sickle cell anemia; where malformed red blood cells block blood vessels, cutting off the nutrient supply and damaging internal organs. Interestingly, sickle cell, so called for the C shaped red blood cells that are the hallmark of the disease, is an evolutionary reaction to malaria, which, as you probably know, is a tropical and subtropical disease. That’s why…”-
“Burnbaum,” said Decker, “Give it a rest. Find a correlation between FND-z and malaria in your own head and save us the headache.”
“Preposterous,” said Aaron, “FND-z is a straight case of genetic manipulation resulting in a bacteria. The two are mutually exclusive. I’m not one for smoking dope, Rick, but when you’re done, why don’t you pass me the pipe.”
“Aaron, I’ll happily shove it right up your pompous ass.”
“Alright, alright,” said Susan, “Let’s focus on the task before us.”
It was decided that Steven would be excused from any further duty. His kids were quite rightly terrified to be out of his presence, even for a moment. After determining that Amanda’s scrapes were just that - scrapes, the family was allowed to huddle in a tent set up in the cafeteria. Steven found himself reading Black Beauty out loud to them by flashlight, and he was secretly grateful to be taken away by the narrator-horse’s tail of trial, tribulation and human goodwill.
Ben saw the first movement just before the change in watch. He and Tran had set up a blind on the top of the gymnasium; the high point of the school’s roof system. With an air-conditioning unit on one side of him and an easy-up with a green tarp laid out over some lawn chairs on the other, he figured he was pretty well hidden and hoped that a passing Fiend wouldn’t notice his perch. So it was very disconcerting that one stepped out of the burned tree line and stared straight at him. It was yet another youth; a female this time and he could see it was pregnant. He watched its eyes scan the base of the school, searching for a way to get to him. Fortunately there were no exterior ladders, the architects knowing full well the curiosity
of children and the liability issues thereof. Then another female stepped out of the woods. It was carrying an infant child. Something didn’t look quite right with the baby and Ben lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The baby turned and looked straight at him. Its eyes were huge and glowed at him like a hungry jungle cat. It had pointy overly large ears that turned and focused on him as well. Suddenly his mind’s eye saw his own image, perched atop the school. His senses became overloaded with sights, sounds, and smells. He could feel the arms of a woman holding him, a scratchy sweater against his side, and he dropped the binoculars with an involuntary scream.
Of Sudden Origin (Of Sudden Origin Saga Book 1) Page 28
