“Come with me,” I told Moyer as I clipped the radio back on my belt. We headed over to my lieutenant.
“Johnson,” I shouted over the mayhem.
He stopped speaking into the radio he was holding.
“This whole area is now quarantined,” I told him. “Tell O.P.D. to push the roadblocks back. No one in or out of these buildings. No one.”
“We don’t have the manpower, Cap,” Johnson said.
“Just get it done.”
He threw up his arms in protest. I ignored him and continued toward the children’s hospital with Moyer in tow. We pushed our way through emergency personnel running this way and that.
The police department had set up a mobile command in the patient drop off area. It was a large RV usually reserved for complicated crime scenes and stand-off scenarios. I opened the door, nearly ripping it off its hinges and stepped inside. Everyone turned to look at me, but no one stopped what they were doing. There was just as much commotion going on inside the RV as there was outside. A portly man with salt and pepper hair wearing a black polo shirt with a badge embroidered over the left breast approached me.
“Can I help you, Captain?” he asked me. He recognized my uniform that was under my fire suit. He must be in charge.
“There is an unsecured tunnel connecting these two hospitals,” I told him, motioning to St. Joseph’s and the children’s hospital. “I need some of your officers to help secure it.”
“I’m sorry, Captain, I can’t help you. I’m spread thin as it is trying to enforce these roadblocks.”
“Damn it,” I said jumping down from the RV steps. I slammed the door. Moyer had a worried look on his face.
Moyer had been on a few calls since coming into our house, but he had never seen anything like this. People were running everywhere, none of whom seemed to have a destination. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars scattered the area all with their light bars silently running. Moyer watched the police helicopter circle overhead and I took a moment to survey the area. All of these people, and not just the emergency personnel, but everyone in this city, in this state, in this country had families, friends, people they care about. If this virus got out it would mean the end of everything. We had a duty to protect them. We needed to do something.
“Moyer,” I said, and he turned. “Follow me.”
We headed for the front entrance of the children’s hospital. The entire front of the building was glass. We could see the waiting area and directly behind that the admissions counter. The entire floor was empty.
Inside it was quiet. Whatever noise was happening outside seemed to hit an invisible barrier that prevented it from entering the hospital. I expected to hear phones ringing off the hook from worried families looking for their loved ones, but the only sound was the air condition pumping through the vents overhead and some crappy slow jazz version of a popular song playing over the speakers. I spotted the elevators and headed toward them. On the way we passed the hospital gift shop. Someone’s coffee still sat by the cash register.
In the elevator foyer I found the control panel that contained the emergency override switch and inserted the designated key and turned it, disabling the elevator. If someone infected with the virus had already passed through and were hiding somewhere in the basement, we didn’t need them sneaking up through the elevator.
“Let’s go. Stay close.” I said as we headed for the stairwell located at the end of the foyer.
The basement was even quieter than the ground floor. It was also significantly colder, although I couldn’t hear the air condition down here. The only sound was coming from the gas passing through the fluorescent light bulbs which ran across the entire length of the tunnel, at least what we could see of it.
The tunnel was twelve feet wide, eight feet tall, and there was a ramp that was about twenty-five feet long that lead down then leveled out for the majority of the tunnel that was at least another couple of hundred feet long. The decline of the tunnel prevented us from seeing across to the other side. From what I could tell it didn’t look like anyone had been through here.
Moyer was looking around nervously. “What do we do now?” he asked.
“Watch the tunnel,” I said as I pulled the radio off of my belt. We still needed more help to watch this tunnel. To be honest if anyone came down this tunnel toward us, we had no way of stopping them.
“Johnson, Moyer and I have reached the tunnel. Find the officer in charge and see if you have any luck in getting us some officers down here.”
“Roger that, Captain,” Johnson said.
“Did you hear that?” Moyer asked abruptly.
“It was probably just the residual static of the radio,” I told him.
“No. It was something else.”
I thought Moyer was getting a little over eager at first. He was hearing things that he wanted to hear. People’s minds often play tricks on them in high stress situations. That kind of behavior can get you killed in this line of work. But then I heard it, a high-pitched whine coming from the other end of the tunnel.
“There it is again. I’m not making this up, Captain.”
“I hear it.”
“What are we going to do?”
The sound came again. I didn’t answer Moyer because I was trying to figure out what exactly was making the noise.
“Sir?” Moyer asked.
“Be quiet,” I told him.
We sat in silence listening for the sound again and then our world went black. My thought was that we had died. The government had decided that they couldn’t risk the chance of the virus getting out, so they bombed the entire medical plaza and now we were buried under tons of rubble. The tunnel slowly faded into view, highlighted in red. I thought we had gone to Hell and the truth is we were about to be closer to it than we realized.
The emergency lights illuminated the entire basement level now. In the event of power outage backup generators will power all important life support systems and the emergency lights. Why they decided to install red lights is beyond me.
Moyer remained surprisingly calm. “What was that?” he asked.
“Standard procedure.” It wasn’t standard procedure, but I didn’t want to disturb Moyer’s state of calmness. I couldn’t afford to have him freaking out. I reached for my radio again. “Johnson?” I said into the mouthpiece. I waited for a moment, but there was no answer. “Johnson?” I said again with no answer. What the hell was going on?
I hadn’t noticed that Moyer had started to wander down the tunnel.
“Moyer, get back here,” I said to him, but he was already at the bottom of the ramp. I headed after him. “Moyer.”
“Shhh,” he said. “I think I see something.”
I stopped halfway down the ramp, although I don’t know why. And then I heard it again. It was louder now. Whatever it was it was shuffling across the linoleum floor and it was heading toward us.
“Hello?” Moyer asked to the thing at the end of the tunnel.
“Moyer, get back here,” I ordered.
I tried the radio once more. “Johnson, we need back up. Johnson? Come in god dammit.”
The shuffling continued. I was only halfway down the ramp and still could not see what Moyer was seeing.
“Ma’am?” he asked, sounding surprised like he had never seen a woman before. “Ma’am are you okay?”
He darted down the tunnel. Just then my radio exploded in a jubilee of static and screams that I couldn’t understand.
“Johnson?” I asked. “Johnson, talk to me. Give me an update. What’s going on up there?” Not surprisingly no answer came back.
I looked down toward the tunnel again and saw Moyer was out of my line of sight. “Moyer, stop,” I shouted and headed after him. “Moyer, stay back.” It was no use. He wasn’t going to listen to me, he was in a trance.
When I reached the bottom of the ramp, I saw what Moyer was after, a woman dressed in a hospital gown at the other end of the tunnel. She was slightly hun
ched, and her toes pointed inward as she shuffled along the linoleum floor. She looked like she had never walked before.
Moyer was further away from me than I had realized, and he was now only about twenty feet away from the woman. I will never forget her face. It was the first time I had ever seen someone infected that wasn’t on TV. I recognized the sores on her face and body. And her glazed over eyes that stared at nothing and saw everything. We needed to leave.
“Moyer!” I shouted as loud as I could. “Stay away from her! She’s infected!”
Either he didn’t hear me or didn’t care because he continued toward her. I ran toward him. “Moyer, no!” I shouted one last time. I was at a full sprint now and only a few feet away from him.
He reached his hand out and put it on her shoulder.
She slowly raised her eyes to his and cocked her head like a confused animal.
“Everything is going to be all right,” he said. “Isn’t it, Captain?”
He turned toward me.
“Captain?”
Declan was standing over me.
I tried lifting my head to get my bearings and I was in immediate pain. My back was sore, my arm felt like it was stuck in the oven for about an hour, and my face felt like I had run a marathon through a corn field.
I noticed right away that I couldn’t hear much of anything. I didn’t need to feel around to know my ears were bleeding.
A low thudding was coming from the tree line to my right. With difficulty I rolled onto my side to see what was causing the noise. From the tree line a series of flashes crowded my vision then a man stepped out of the woods behind the flashes, it was Charlie. He was walking toward me, yelling at the top of his lungs as he fired round after round into the group of scavengers to my left. They had huddled under the other truck.
I quickly rolled in the other direction just in time to see Charlie pump one final round into the chest of the last scavenger. Charlie stopped, his shotgun hung limp in his left hand, the barrel dragging in the dirt. He was looking passed me with a sullen face and tears in his eyes. Then I remembered.
The charred remains of the Jeep looked like the skeletal remains of some large animal. Not much of the armored truck was left either. The scavenger who had tried to escape in the armored truck would not have survived the blast.
Charlie stood staring into the fire, perhaps hoping his brother would step out of the fire unscathed. He lost his family earlier and now his brother too.
How did things go so wrong? We’d been in this situation before and had succeeded without a problem. But what changed this time? Was it the new addition to our team? Unlikely. We’ve added team members before, and the position wasn’t just handed to him.
Was it the scavengers? Their equipment was getting better. When we first started encountering them, they had pick-up trucks and twenty-two caliber rifles. Now they had armored trucks and assault rifles. Not to mention the explosives. That kind of fire power is hard to come by nowadays. What was their original intention anyway? Certainly not a kamikaze attack in a skirmish in the middle of a clearing.
Maybe I’m not fit for command anymore. The incident at the hospital has haunted me ever since and now I will have another memory to haunt me.
Abruptly Charlie turned around looking toward something behind me. My first thought was that the scavengers had somehow radioed for help, but it’s not known for sure if the scavengers work independently from one another or together.
Charlie dropped his shotgun in the dirt and started running toward the unseen event or person. I rolled onto my chest to witness what I had not expected to see.
California was heading out of the tree line and in front of him was Declan. It wasn’t these two that concerned me, it was what they had. Stumbling in front of them, trying to regain his balance from Declan kicking him, was the long haired, bearded leader of the scavengers.
Declan threw the scavenger into the wheel well of the remaining armored truck. He landed hard and grimaced in pain. He must have hit on one of the lug nuts. He was bleeding from the forehead and one of the corners of his mouth. The blood flowed onto his dirty and matted hair where it soaked in.
California had his rifle pointed at the scavenger and the man seemed frightened at this. He was raising his right hand in front of his face to shield himself from the barrel. As if somehow his hand would magically stop the bullet if California decided to pull the trigger.
One thing I’ve learned about California is he has a very relaxed demeanor and rarely does things unprovoked. As frightening as he looked and as ready as he may have seemed to the scavenger that he would put two through his head, I could tell California was calmer than ever. The person the scavenger really had to worry about was Charlie.
Charlie was the stark opposite of California. Hot headed, quick trigger finger, and a wicked temper, mixed with little to no scruples made Charlie a deadly package. Unfortunately for the scavenger, Charlie had just watched his brother being blown up and was quickly making his way over to the bearded man. One of his Louisville Sluggers was already in his hand. Charlie loved his bats and relished any moment he got to use them. He had reached the scavenger and already had the bat high over his head ready to swing.
“You killed my family,” Charlie yelled, swinging the bat into the scavenger’s arm. The scavenger tried to deflect the blow and it glanced off of his arm, knocking him into the dirt. No doubt it hurt, but I don’t think it broke anything. “You killed my brother,” he yelled, again raising the bat above his head, this time bringing it down hard on his ribs.
I may have heard a snap on the second swing, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care, I just needed him to stop.
“Charles,” I shouted. I don’t know if it was the shock of hearing his real name or the order itself, but it caught Charlie off guard, and he paused for a brief moment.
I quickly and painfully pushed myself up onto my feet and rushed between Charlie and the scavenger. My head was pounding. No doubt I hit it on the ground when I was blown back.
“Get out of my way,” Charlie said trying to push his way through.
“Stand down,” I told him, pushing my hand against his chest.
“Get out of my way, I’m going to fucking kill him,” he screamed this time.
I placed my leg behind his and pushed hard. He fell to the ground. I knelt down next to him, grabbed one of his gear straps and pulled his face to mine.
“You’ll get your opportunity. Right now, I need to know what is going on. Understood?”
He nodded angrily.
I stood and extended my arm to Charlie. He grabbed it and I helped him up.
“Cuff him,” I said to Declan.
Declan and California acted as a team. California threw him forward onto the ground, placing his knee on the back of his neck. Declan reached into one of his side pockets and produced a set of white plastic flex cuffs. With a rapid series of clicks the scavenger’s wrists were bound together. California picked the scavenger back up again and threw him back against the wheel well.
The fact that they were able to capture this scavenger without killing him after such a horrible turn of events is astounding. We needed to know where they were going with these explosives, where they got them from, and most importantly, why. As much as Charlie wanted to turn this guy’s head into mush, he too understood the need to know.
“No one fucking touches this guy,” I ordered. I knew everyone understood, but I needed extra confirmation and also to let my team know that I was still in charge and most importantly we were still a team. “Understood?” I asked sternly.
“Yes, sir,” California and Declan confirmed.
The fire had not left Charlie’s eyes.
“Charles!”
“Sir,” he said reluctantly.
Now that I had them all in line, I needed to know what was going on.
I really didn’t know where to start with this guy. Our team is not in the business of taking prisoners. And my previous profession didn’t
require extensive interrogation techniques. I decided to start simple and see where things went from there.
“What is your name?” I asked the scavenger.
“Fuck you,” he said through his black teeth.
I could tell right away this wasn’t going to be easy and he would never tell us exactly what we wanted to know.
I looked at Charlie through the corner of my eye. He looked back and nodded. That nod told me he would hold back until I needed him. The only question became; when would the most opportune moment be?
I knelt down next to the scavenger in an attempt to level with him.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked him.
He looked me straight in the eyes with piercing blue eyes of his own. “Same as you,” he said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“We’re all just trying to survive.”
“This is surviving?” I gestured to the carnage around us.
“I recall you attacking us.”
“I meant the killing. The looting. The destruction. That is survival?” I gave a little laugh of disbelief.
“Are you not doing the same?” The bearded scavenger said.
“Are you honestly asking me if I go around killing innocent people?”
“I didn’t think I was being unclear.”
“Well the answer is no, I don’t.”
“The ‘HK’ that was painted on your vehicle,” he motioned to the burning wreckage of the Jeep behind me with a nod of his head. “And is proudly sewn on your jackets, doesn’t that mean ‘Hunter Killer’?”
It was as if a bomb had gone off. Had he seen us following them? I didn’t want to tip him off and give him the upper hand, so I didn’t break eye contact.
“Yes, it does,” I answered.
“Very well, Captain,” he said. “Then I think it’s safe to assume that you are not part of a search and rescue team.”
“Let me make one thing clear, we will do whatever it takes to protect people from scum like you.”
Wanderer (Book 2): Hunters Page 6
