Behind him, heavy gunfire erupted, and the engine roared as the guardsmen sought to escape their fate.
Chapter One: Loss of innocence
Early Summer, 2301
Four months post infection
Johns Island, Charleston SC
Kitch McCall was answering the Governor’s call when he stepped reluctantly onto a crowded, aged, and shuddering school bus bound for Charleston General Hospital. Standing on the lower metal step looking up at an impatient supervisor, the trapped odors escaping through the open door had him pausing mid-stride and wrinkling his nose. Perspiration, fresh soap, stale smoke, wet hair, cheap aftershave and even cheaper perfumes made him shudder in disgust. To hide his revulsion, he turned and nodded briefly to his smiling, overly proud dad. He then lowered his head, slightly embarrassed at Mike’s enthusiastic waving, and boarded.
Head down, watching out the corners of his eyes, Kitch moved cautiously as the bus’s magnets re-engaged. The ponderous, crowded vehicle lurched into motion with a squeal and a long shriek of metal engaging magnetics as the buses power units kicked in. As the bus rose a foot off the road, Kitch held onto the backs of two seats and waited for the forward swaying motion to begin. When it did, he looked for space amid the boisterous teenage speculation playing out across the aisle. He shuffled forward to take a seat beside a sneering red-headed youth midway down. Settling in, Kitch knew with a sinking certainty that of all the nineteen-year-old survivors seated about him today, this was not going to be an easy journey, especially for him.
If there was a constant in Kitch’s life, apart from his doting dad, Mike, it was Tourette’s. Thing with Tourette’s, as Kitch well knew to his shame and continued embarrassment, was that it was one-hundred and ten percent, guaranteed, never-to-miss going to let him down when he most needed it not to.
He sank back in a seat stiffened by years of overuse and minimal maintenance. The thick green material covering it was finely cracked like a spider web, and stained with—well best not think about that. Kitch looked up at a roof dotted with old spitball stains, splat marks from food fights, patterned shapes from exploding soda bottles and muddy dot spots from countless basketballs and frowned. Better than risking looking outside. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and worked on what was coming next.
As a young Tourette’s sufferer, he knew he was ill prepared for the horrors he would face this day and wondered how he would do coming out the other side. Not only did Kitch suffer the curse of TS, but he also endured the added hell of OCD. Kitch gnawed nervously at his lower lip as the various layers of stink coming off his bus companions continued to intrude on his thoughts and senses. He was not accustomed to crowds and resented being there, but understood the necessity.
Ultra-sensitive to outside influences, Kitch did his best to ignore the odors, but the more he tried, the more his sharply defined senses took in heady perfumes, sickly aftershaves, deodorants and unwashed hair odors. His head started to pound. Reflexively, he swung his forearm across his nose and mouth. Sure someone would notice and comment negatively, he leaned his head down onto the handrail in front of him, praying no one spoke up—or if they did, they would simply think he was suffering travel sickness, not an uncommon phenomenon in old pre-war magnetic transporters.
The rickety old thing should have been mothballed twenty years back. In its day, it was used to move troops to disembarking points and bore the hallmarks of bored soldiers still. Aged and scratched names, hearted initials, ranks, regimental numbers, and crude comments about NCO’s could still be made out on the back of the seat, despite decades of cleaning.
The immediate and most notable thing about his journey was that the military had used independently powered vehicles to smash a safe path through thousands of abandoned public vehicles stalled along the road. Except for the occasional mall trip to visit a specialist doctor or collect medication from O’Meara’s Drug Store, Kitch’s Tourette’s-inspired shouts, jerks, and unbidden curses had ensured he lived the life of a recluse. Tourette’s aside, Kitch knew that despite his sheltered existence, the truth was, not a soul who attended Roper Hospital would be able to tear their eyes away from the walking horrors imprisoned there. Dear God, many passengers on the bus might even see relatives and loved ones.
He knew that personal images would sear themselves into untried memories like red-hot cattle brands. Some would scar, thicken and stick for life, turning dreams into inescapable nightmares. Others would linger on the periphery of every waking moment and at night fester into wicked dreamscapes filled with undead horrors. The kind that would bring him awake suddenly at three AM, gasping for air and perspiring profusely. The kind of nightmare that would have anyone staring bug-eyed into the dark, listening hard for the tell-tale sound someone was there, standing by your bed ready to rip your eyeballs from your skull with filthy fingers caked in old blood. The kind of dream that didn’t let him get back to sleep until he had explored every wardrobe, room, and peered under the bed with a large, heavy flashlight just in case. And when he did manage to crawl back under the covers, it was with a hammering heart.
Head down, Kitch considered why he was on this particular bus. An unprecedented pandemic wreaked unheard-of havoc, death, and disease across the globe. It had started months ago, right here in Charleston, or so the overly-sincere newscasters professed. The only salient point any of the news agreed upon was that despite all the signs of a drawn-out pandemic, the CDC did not call out the National Guard until the end of the first month. A fat lot of good that did, Kitch mused, settling back into his rock-hard seat and folding his arms while looking straight ahead. He’d had enough of looking at the world passing by through the grimy window.
Doing his best to ignore the hubbub permeating the bus, he mulled his situation over. Even with all the advances of twenty-fourth-century medicine, he understood there was no escaping the plague’s deadly consequences unless he made it through the day. Taking in his fellow passengers, Kitch also worked out that he sat among the privileged. He wasn’t infected and never would be, not once he received the vaccine he was traveling toward at a steady forty miles per hour to receive. Well, not unless he was bitten, he grimaced. Bitten, well there were no guarantees, except gut-wrenching fear and the time it took to turn into one of those things.
A half-hour later, Kitch’s rowdy bus cruised slowly onto hospital grounds braced by sandbagged machine-gun posts and flanked by two olive-drab tanks with their cannons aimed toward the city center. Weary-looking crews sat atop the metal behemoths cradling automatic weapons, smoking and talking quietly among themselves while watching crowds of hollow-eyed, newly infected patients queuing for a treatment that would never be administered.
Kitch watched them with a morbid fascination. He knew what everyone was thinking. Why waste a shot when they were as good as dead? They would soon be dead once they turned, just look at the military. Alongside the queue waited naïve, anxious family members. He could tell by the way their lips moved, the clasped hands and imploring eyes glancing between the sky and hospital that they were praying for a miracle vaccine. Someone ought to tell them, Kitch grimaced with all the arrogance of a life not yet lived to its fullest. The government wouldn’t waste a vaccine shot on a suspected infected. Y’all are done for. Once the insidious infection took hold, not man, nor God, nor medication could save them, and that’s a fact his dad repeated often enough to make him hear the words in his mind’s eye.
Kitch tilted a chin not yet bearded and looked up and out the grease-streaked window as the bus settled to a squeaky halt, and its magnetics let go with a dull clunk. As the bus supervisor checked the power unit’s charge life, Kitch’s eyes focused on several dots darting about a blue Charleston sky. He squinted. A squadron of aggressive Viper-class helicopters were beating closer to the hospital. Blades thumped in unison at the warm air as they buzzed low over the city center. His eyes shifted left and up when a closer noise pulled his gaze away. It was a deeper, thudding sound and yet not unlike the spe
eding Vipers that lightly shook the old bus. Swiveling his head left, he could see treetops bending, as if to an approaching hurricane.
Hovering immediately above the hospital, bulky transport helicopters hauling medical supplies circled as pilots waited for an opportunity to land. Stabilized some fifty feet over a concrete apron, it let down a bright blue cargo net loaded with supplies. He watched the hook gently fall away from the eye, the ascending rope twirled and swung in the breeze. The net fluttered outward, spreading to reveal crates as it settled on the ground. Ever so slowly, the lumbering National Guard transporter turned south and thumped away. His line of sight followed a concrete landing pad stained with rust to a half-dozen men and women in camouflaged uniforms shading their eyes, waiting by trolleys for the dust and debris to settle before they collected the supplies.
Slightly to the left was a maintenance shack. Kitch could see an old, bio-fuel emergency generator. Puffs of filthy, black, carbon-rich fumes were spurting from a curved pipe burned to a shiny, black-blue which told a story of strain and pressure. Empty fuel cans were scattered untidily beside several neat lines of what he presumed were filled ones waiting their turn to be emptied. Thick black cables snaked from the old wartime generator into the hospital down concrete stairs and through an open metal door into the inky darkness. Judging by the way the old machine shook, vibrated, chugged and spat out plumes of greasy black smoke, he wondered how long the ancient generator was going to last and thought it was anyone’s guess.
Noise in the bus ratcheted up several excited notches, gaining Kitch’s attention. He glanced over his shoulder. Over the heads of speculating teenagers crowding the rear window, he couldn’t see what it was exciting the small crowd. A dozen or more curious bus passengers had left their seats and lined the grimy windows. Staring up, several were gesticulating. Others simply craned their necks, trying to see whatever it was that held their attention. Kitch’s curiosity got the better of him, and despite his introverted nature, he moved out of his seat and found a spot to search the sky across their shoulders and over various hairstyles. By bending his neck and craning forward, he focused on the city’s horizon. In between the tall buildings, against a cloud-filled sky, a camouflaged Viper-class attack helicopter hovered like a hunting hawk waiting to dive on a rodent.
By degrees, the lethal killing machine tipped forward on its nose, blades spinning. Moving in a sideways motion, the helicopter came sharply into focus. It was close enough that Kitch could make out the pilot adjusting his controls, straightening his aircraft. The pilot turned his head, said something to his co-pilot, who nodded and then, as if in agreement, his left hand shifted off the yoke briefly. When it returned, almost instantly, a shiny black missile streaked toward an unseen target trailing faint, white smoke. A dull boom followed. A small mushroom cloud rose from below to Kitch’s right.
Beside the crowded bus, the tanks’ crews jumped up and began speaking animatedly. Though Kitch couldn’t hear what they were saying, it was obvious they were speculating on the helicopter’s actions. Shading bloodshot eyes with flattened hands, the weary tankers joked and commented loudly on potential targets. A grey smoke spiral marked a second missile strike.
Within seconds, another Viper aligned with the first. As a part of the astounded nineteen-year-olds, Kitch gawped at the aggressive air maneuvers as they alighted from the battered, yellow bus to join snaking queues of teenagers. A flight of killing machines joined the two Vipers. Each launched dozens of rockets into a Charleston suburb. Three Vipers slowly descended below the hunters above. Jockeying briefly, the pilots formed a line-abreast formation. Hovering in unison, they aligned before tipping onto their noses. Slowly at first, but gathering speed, twin rail guns hammering, the Viper formation swept slowly forward, spewing hot, lethal rounds at unseen ground targets.
As his foot hit the asphalt, Kitch’s left shoulder jerked involuntarily. He barely suppressed a high-pitched squeak when a distant but disturbingly loud staccato of multiple, hammering machine guns commenced, the long-distance sound of thousands of rounds striking concrete, and God knows what, or more precisely, who, reaching his ears. Embarrassed, Kitch lowered head. He glanced around. With the action going on above, it seemed no one noticed his uncontrolled oral outburst.
By threes and twos, the remaining Vipers formed two perfect aerial lines. Methodically, the flying armada carpeted city streets below them with a hail of lead. Kitch watched streaky lines of bright yellow, red, and light blue as superheated bullets spun toward targets, until he was forced to shuffle forward.
Harassed medical staff ignored the overhead action. They moved slowly and methodically about their tasks, never looking up like this happened every day, because it probably did. A nearby, rapid popping sound had Kitch flinching and twisting his head to his right so suddenly that he experienced a burning sensation on his neck that quickly subsided. He clamped both lips tight around a Tourette’s-inspired squawk and hung onto it with an angered determination as a dozen or more barking automatic rifles opened up at some unseen target.
Hard-faced soldiers and troubled-looking police officers cocking and checking weapons rushed toward the sounds. Closer still, rapid and heavier automatic gunfire thwacked out. A rifle grenade sounded, and more followed in quick succession. Smoke rose as the gunfight intensified from behind a thick hedge overlooking a decline into the neighboring suburb. Rapid gunfire petered out to the occasional three-round burst Kitch picked up on as small arms fire. An empty silence followed. Minutes later, unhurried soldiers and sweaty police returned to patrol the hospital campus. There was no relaxation of taut facial features for a battle won, simply the resignation of more battles to follow in the hollow eyes that swept over the assembled teenagers.
The cracked asphalt road was baking in an oppressive summer heat only South Carolina residents could appreciate. Kitch was assaulted by a series of intense, intrusive smells like never before. One in particular had his gut churning as he fought back the urge to vomit over the back of the youth in front of him. A deep, dark stench created in the foulest pit in Hades where all the worst rotten meat was thrown made his eyes sting and nose burn. Following the vile odor with his nose, he glanced over his left shoulder. Judging by the number of hands and shirttails whipping up to cover faces, he wasn’t the only one so affected. Kitch’s eyes settled on the tanks. He frowned. Why in God’s name were the tanks surrounded by swarms of fat, blue flies?
Kitch took a pace to his left, letting the teenage crowd flow past him. Tourette’s and OCD driving his actions, he made for the parked bus and moved alongside its dented flank to better view the tanks. From the rear of the vehicle, he peeked around the cracked tail light. Squinting in the bright sunlight, he found himself focusing on a thick, swirling fly swarm that almost obliterated the tank’s outline. He almost threw up at the source of their meal. Both vehicles’ tracks oozed a red, jelly-like ichor. The slimy substance had formed a dozen or more sticky pools at the base of the tracks, in which swarming flies were laying eggs. Fat white maggots writhed and swam happily in the icky gelatin mess.
Long strands of black human hair floating away in the slight breeze out of a sprocket wheel shocked Kitch. He rested his hand on the bus for support as he stared harder, not believing what he was seeing. By now, several nervous teenagers had joined him. He heard muttered disbelief but pushed the dull burble of disjointed chatter aside to concentrate on the macabre sight. Kitch’s eyes did not deceive him—there were large chunks of flesh jammed in the tank tracks, easily recognizable as human to anyone with basic high school anatomy.
Curled fingers for sure. An ankle with dangly toes, nails painted blue. White bones stuck out like candy store sticks in a glass jar. A blackened chunk of shattered rib cage was pressed up against what was clearly a pile of twisted, blue intestines alive with fat, white maggots. As a barking voice hurling commands to stop gawking and line up drew him away from the gruesome sight, Kitch swore he saw a woman’s face peering out from within a gory track. Her sole
milk-pale eye followed him until he retreated behind the bus. He was certain it was once a woman. Blood-streaked makeup and eyeliner told him so.
Directed to a series of queues by an armed soldier not much older than himself, a bug-eyed Kitch stared anywhere but back at the tanks. He didn’t feel a need to revisit that hellish scene. As it was, he’d have trouble getting the images out of his head and the stink from his nose. Ahead and beside him, a hundred or so of South Carolina’s nineteen-year-olds waited in queues under a hot sun to receive their preventative plague injection. There was no shelter or relief from the relentless heat, except for where the medical personnel stood. So, when passing fat white and dark grey clouds paused long enough to dump their contents in less than a minute on the teenagers, all were soaked to the bone. Steam rose off hair, clothing, the grass and asphalt, thickening the air to the point Kitch could taste the hospital and accompanying death with every breath. Water pooled and then flowed quickly away, leaving the ground momentarily fresh and clean of the stench of death and decay.
Most teenagers ignored the steamy heat as they talked quietly to friends or newly-made acquaintances. Locals all, they knew they would dry out in no time. Many teenagers, like Kitch, looked about with a mixture of fear, trepidation, and anxiety at being placed in such close proximity to Charleston’s center of plague defense.
Desperately trying to suppress the effects of his greatest enemy, Tourette’s, Kitch kept his head down and shuffled forward. His senses reeled at the multitude of oppressive sights facing him. His jaw ached with the effort he employed keeping his teeth clamped firmly together, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t prevent his flickering face muscles twitching or fluttering eyelids betraying his affliction. Balling both fists, he scowled fiercely. Several teenagers noted his aggressive posture and muttered a warning to others. Now he was the focus of all the wrong attention. Damn, but he hated Tourette’s with a rare and detestable passion only personal experience of the affliction could raise.
Survival_Book 1_And Tomorrow Page 4
