Contagion On The World

by J. B. Beatty

  The debate I’m listening to continues—two low-level employees trying to find the path of least resistance. Nothing about their voices gives me the feeling that they are battle-hardened killers. I can see them now, through the gaps in the boxes on the shelves. I can’t see faces but I can tell they are standing a few feet apart. I look ahead and I am still 20 feet or more from the end of the shelving. It will take me a few minutes at this speed to get in position to do something.

  Then I hear Justin’s voice. “Drop that gun, or I will kill him… I’m dead serious. Drop it.”

  I panic and climb up the shelf. I push myself through a gap in the boxes and look down at the scene, pointing my rifle at the female who has her gun trained on Justin.

  “Drop it,” I say. “There is no way you win this one. But you won’t die if you just cooperate.”

  She quickly looks up at me and I see fear in her eyes. Her eyes dart between me and Justin, who has his knife poised at the neck of the male. She takes a few steps away from us, towards the entrance to the warehouse. As she moves, she narrows the angle between Justin and me. It would make her shot easier.

  “Stop moving!” orders Justin.

  “Just stay right there, missy,” commands Carrie, who is advancing quickly down the aisle behind her.

  Finally, the woman realizes she has no moves left and freezes in position. “You won’t get away with this,” she says. “You do not want to mess with our force. This is going to end very badly for you all.” That’s when I notice a slight southern twang to her voice. I am watching her when I realize Justin is struggling. The driver has a handgun and he is trying to raise it.

  He pulls the trigger and the gunshot echoes throughout the cavernous warehouse. Instead of Justin being wounded, I look to see blood squirting from the driver’s neck. I don’t know where the bullet went but Justin’s knife laid his neck wide open. The woman soldier hesitates, as if she doesn’t want to shoot while Justin is still holding her partner’s body in front of him. She doesn’t notice Carrie speed her last few steps. She doesn’t feel the rifle butt coming. She collapses in a heap.

  Justin drops the man’s dead body. “Duct tape her,” he orders. Carrie pulls out a roll of tape she must have been carrying, and sets to work taping the woman’s legs together, then her hands. And her mouth. Justin has cleaned his knife on the dead man’s pants and stands next to the kidnap victim, pushing his hands together as if that will make an exit solution appear.

  “They might have heard the gunshot,” he says nervously. We’ve got to get out of here fast. They’re going to find the body and the blood.”

  “We can make it look like an accident,” I say.

  He looks up at me like I’m crazy. He says, “He’s got a slashed throat,” as if that ends the discussion.

  “We can slow them down, at least a little, by making this look like it wasn’t an outside attack. Put his gun back into his holster.” Justin still looks at me like I’m crazy, but he picks up the gun and puts it back. “Now step away,” I say. “Pull that woman out of here. I can start pushing boxes onto his body, and make this look like an accident of some kind.”

  He and Carrie slide the woman down the aisle as I start pushing on boxes of olive oil. They are much heavier than I expect. Eventually I get the hang of it, figuring out where on the box to push and how to brace my weight. The boxes start tumbling on top of the twisted corpse. I keep pushing until there is nothing left to push. The crashing noises have been thunderous. Below me, I can see smashed boxes, atop a pool of olive oil with a red streak. I don’t see the body anymore.

  I also don’t see Justin or Carrie. I climb down quickly into the aisle I crept in on. I run to the door. Justin is standing next to the truck. “Get in!” he shouts.

  I do and he climbs into the driver’s seat.

  “Where is Carrie? And the woman?”

  He gestures with his thumb to the rear of the truck. He turns the key and the engine fires up with a little gas.

  “Where are we going?”

  He points right. “There’s a side exit.”

  We move fast and he accelerates to the gate. “It’s closed!” I yell. We hit it hard enough that it breaks the chain holding the two sides together. One side bounces back on us before we’re through and I hear it scrape the side of the truck. Justin turns left onto a dirt road and the truck almost feels like it’s going to tip.

  “Where are we going?” I ask again.

  “We’re going fast as we can out of here until we come up with an idea.” I look at him. He is crazy.

  “This fits!” he says, as if he heard me. “They were grabbing all the olive oil they could. They weren’t careful. The boxes come tumbling, crashing on the guy. Maybe the broken glass slashes his throat. Either way, he’s dead. The girl soldier panics, takes off in the truck because she knows her people will be brutal with her.”

  “Okay,” I say, nervously watching the speedometer, which is hitting a healthy 60 for a dirt road. “They’ve got planes, helicopters, drones. We can’t outrun them. We’ve got to hide this truck.”

  “It’s kind of big,” he says. “We can’t just park it under a tree.”

  “We could crash it,” I say. “Pretend to crash it. Then get away as fast as we can on foot.”

  “They’d track us pretty fast. And we’re not going to be able to go nearly as fast as them while carrying a woman wrapped in duct tape. What we need,” he says, “What we need is a garage. A big freaking garage that can fit a truck.”

  “There is no way on earth that we’re going to find something like that in the next few minutes. We don’t have all day to shop!” And then, of course, we see it. Justin slams on the brakes and I hear boxes falling in the back. He backs up a bit. It’s a house but it has two garages, one of them super-sized. Probably the owner was a truck driver. We pull into the drive and I leap out and run to the garage. The door is locked. I bust a window with my pistol and hear movement behind me. It’s a zombie, moving fast.

  “Crap, not now!” I aim and drop him. Then I finish busting the jagged edges out of the way and pull myself through. Underneath is a workbench. Once on my feet, I can’t help but notice that the garage is already full. A semi-truck, minus the trailer, of course. I open the garage from the inside and point at the semi.

  “We’ve got to move it,” Justin yells as he jumps out of the delivery truck. “Keys!”

  I climb to the semi cab and look. None there. We look for a key rack in the garage. None. Justin breaks into the house and comes back empty-handed. He even pats down the zombie I just killed.

  “Put it into neutral,” he says. “Take off the emergency brake.”

  I fumble around and finally do so while he tears around the garage looking for a cable. Finally, he attaches something to the front of the semi, and runs it to the front of the delivery truck. I get out and he gets behind the wheel of the delivery truck and throws it into reverse. Slowly he makes the cable taut, and then he starts pulling.

  At first, the semi has no interest in moving. Our truck strains under the load. But after a few seconds, the tires start to roll. Slowly, surely, we pull the semi out of the garage. Justin pulls it down the drive before easing to a stop. Then I help him detach the cable. He gets back in the delivery truck and drives it around the semi and onto the lawn before angling it into the garage. It fits handily. I toss the cable into the bushes and follow, lowering the garage door.

  We look at each other and finally breathe.

  “We might have done it,” I say.

  “Maybe. Did you hear anything? Helicopters?”

  “Not yet.” I crane my neck and try to look out of the window I busted.

  “Now what?”

  A pounding comes from the inside of the truck. We slide open the door and a bedraggled Carrie climbs out. “Well, that was sure a boatload of fun.” She looks around. “Are we safe here?”

  I shrug. Justin looks at her blankly. He says, “We need to interrogate her, and we need to get out of
here.”

  “We’re only 2-3 miles from the fence,” I add. “They will be searching eventually, if not already. We can’t stay here.”

  “We can’t travel in broad daylight, either, not this close to the fence,” says Justin.

  “Then we interrogate her here,” offers Carrie.

  “Probably a little safer if we take her somewhere else,” I say. “If we found this garage by looking for a place big enough to stash the truck, they will probably do the same thing.”

  “Let’s take her to the woods,” says Carrie.

  “We need to talk to her. We can’t have her anyplace she can scream for help. We need a basement,” I say. “If we can’t find a dungeon.”

  I walk around the back of the truck. The woman is laying on her side, awake. She stares back at me and fear is in her eyes.

  37→HERE A POOR PRISONER FORSOOK

  Justin’s map indicates a complex of buildings into the woods about a mile and a half south. We have to travel in daylight, but we have the cover of forest except for two road crossings.

  “How do we?...” says Carrie, pointing at our captive.

  Justin hands me his rifle and throws the woman over his shoulder. “Ready?” he says.

  We head out, with all of our senses on high alert. So far, we have heard no helicopters or vehicles. I watch carefully for drones. When we get to our first road crossing, we wait under the trees for several minutes. Nothing. We dash across and back under cover.

  At the second crossing, we hear a helicopter but it is still far away. We hurry.

  “It could be anything,” says Carrie. “It doesn’t mean they’re searching yet.”

  Justin grunts and keeps going, after shifting his load to his other shoulder.

  Finally, we find the buildings that Justin has been leading us to. It’s an old house with some outbuildings. It’s on a two-track drive, well back in the woods.

  “Not bad,” says Carrie.

  Justin sets the woman down. We are still standing in the forest. “Check it out,” he says to me.

  I look both ways and bring my rifle ready before heading out across the yard. It’s not much of a yard, and it doesn’t look like anything was tended to even before the apocalypse. I pound on the door and yell, “Anyone here?”

  Then I walk in after breaking out a window in the door to unlock it. The house has been empty for a long time. The fridge is empty, the power off. Whoever was here moved out long before they died. I step out the back door and indicate to the others that I am checking out the other buildings. The garage is empty but for a lot of formerly mechanized junk. The shed is empty. I walk around the back edge of the lot. No neighbors nearby.

  Through the trees, I spot something which may be a structure. As I move closer, I see it for what it is. My grandfather used to have something like this—he called it a storm cellar. It was not very far from the house but brush had grown up around it over the years.

  It only rises three of four feet above the ground, metal doors angled. I pull at the rusted handle. Not locked but heavy as hell. Below, a stairway descends into darkness. I take a few steps down it, and am met by the smell of animals and urine. I retreat to the others.

  “Well?” Justin asks.

  “We might have our dungeon. Do you have a flashlight?”

  “I do,” offers Carrie.

  I return to the steps and descend with the flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other. The space is much smaller than I expect, with stone walls and roots from nearby trees pushing their way in. Something scurries in the corner and without thinking I fire at it. The explosion hammers my ears and I find a former possum. They’re completely innocent animals even though they disgust me. I feel bad for killing it. I feel even worse having to grab it by the tail so I can toss it out into the woods.

  I wave them over. They look at the steps. “You want us to go down there?” says Carrie. She looks sick. So does Justin.

  “It’s disgusting,” I acknowledge. “But it’s safer than the house. And noise isn’t going to travel.”

  “No,” she says, looking to Justin for support.

  He backs away. “I’m not going in there. You guys both know I have claustrophobia. That is well-documented.”

  She looks at me in triumph.

  Justin adds, “But Arvy’s right. That’s the place. You two take her down there and talk to her. I’ll hang back in the woods and keep watch.”

  Carrie stammers: “You are not… This is… oh… I am not happy.” She grabs the prisoner by her feet. I grab her shoulders. We go down and set her in the middle of the cellar. I turn on the flashlight and as I turn to go shut the door overhead, Justin is already lowering it.

  Carrie strips the tape off the woman’s face. It looks painful. The woman takes a gulp of breath, looks at us with wide eyes and launches into a scream.

  “Hey…” I start to say, but Carrie hauls off and slaps her hard across the face. She brings her own face close to woman’s and she says, “That was your only warning. Every time you scream, I will take off a finger.”

  I don’t know what transformed Carrie but any trace of the girl who speculated on modern Christianity is gone. Her eyes sparkle with excitement as she brings her knife between their faces. And she licks it.

  The smell gets worse as the woman loses control of her bladder.

  “Now, let’s get this over with,” says Carrie. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” says our defiant captive.

  I start to say something but Carrie holds out her arm to wave me off. This is not pre-arranged, but I guess she wants to take charge.

  “I understand from that that you are requesting a show of sincerity on our part, some sort of demonstration that we truly want the information we are requesting. Hmmm?” And she grabs the woman’s hand and isolates her pinky finger, bringing the knife up.

  “My name’s Rose!” the woman says quickly.

  “Pretty name!” says Carrie sweetly. “Now, who do you work for?”

  The woman hesitates. Carrie looks at her hand. She says, “Greater America…. It’s the Greater America Force.”

  “Are you military?”

  “Yes, I mean we all were before we joined up. It’s a private contractor. But we’re part of the government now. All that’s left.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  Rose starts to say something, then changes her mind. She looks away from Carrie.

  “Oh, I see,” says Carrie. Before Rose can even object, Carries grabs her hand again and slices off the pinkie. The scream is deafening. She tries to roll but Carrie moves to sit on top of her.

  “Careful,” says Carrie. “You’re starting to hyperventilate. Slow down and relax. Here, breathe into my hand. You want to recycle some of that carbon dioxide so that the oxygen doesn’t overwhelm your brain. Okay. That’s better. Good girl. Now I need you to talk to me. Tell me everything you can about how you got this job right in the middle of the Apocalypse… Go ahead. Take your time. But hurry.”

  Rose stops struggling and stares wide-eyed at Carrie. Her lips quiver. She spills: “I was looking for work because I had to help my mom with the rent. I saw an ad on Craigslist. They were looking for former military who were single. I’m divorced, so I applied and they hired me. I had to report to a place in Illinois for training. So I went. It was just like the Army. They ran us through drills, weeded out the people who couldn’t cut it, did some weapons training, all that stuff.”

  “Did they give you shots? Vaccines?”

  “Yeah, when we were done training, right before we went on what they said was our major exercise. I got assigned to Michigan. Some people went to North Carolina, others to Hawaii, all over. Some people even were talking about going to Europe.”

  She stops.

  “Then what?”

  “Then they sent me here. And they had crews put up that fence because of the epidemic. Then we had to go all around in the secure zone to make it secure, we had to shoot an
yone who had the virus, because they said there was no cure. We shot a lot of people, but we had to. They told us if we didn’t, they’d have to shoot us. It was a national emergency. That’s the only reason I shot so many people. Some were real sick and turned into animals. They were attacking each other. Some still seemed okay, and asked for us to help, but our commanders told us they were all infected.”

  “You killed everyone in your secure zone?”

  “No, only the ones who weren’t immune. The immune ones were all living in certain places. They were marked as clean and we didn’t bother with those. Then, after we got most of the infected, they put me and my friends on guard duty and they had a special team mop up the remaining infected who had been hiding out in the secure zone.”

  “What do you do on your job?”

  “That’s all! That’s all I can say! I took an oath! Please don’t kill me!” Rose breaks down sobbing. “Please don’t kill me. I’ll tell them I don’t remember anything. I won’t say anything about you! I took an oath!”

  Carrie grabs her hand again. “An oath? To whom? I’m kind of curious about that. It couldn’t have been to the United States of America, because we’re Americans, and your people have been killing us. Come on, tell me about the oath. We still have nine fingers to go.”

  I can’t handle it anymore. I mumble that I need some fresh air, but Carrie doesn’t seem to hear me. She is too involved, too wired, too enthusiastic—too everything. I push against the heavy cellar door and face the blinding sun. Once out, I hunch low and look around. Save for a blue jay screaming nearby, all is quiet. I don’t see Justin, but I eventually hear him signal me with a low whistle.

  I creep in that direction. “What up?” he asks.

  I lay down on the ground about five feet from him. “I can’t handle it in there anymore.”

  “Is she talking?”

  “Carrie has ways of making her talk. She’s going full Gitmo in there.”

  “Serious?”

  “Fingers.”

  Justin looks at me for a moment while he absorbs this. He tries to shake the thought out of his head. Then he says, “They’d kill us in a second. Without hesitation. We need whatever info she can find out in order to save our own lives.”