by B. T. Wright
“Jake, no!” he heard Jess scream behind him.
Jake lifted Amy as he got to one knee, but the infected were on him. He pulled Amy all the way up, draped her over his left shoulder, and pulled his Beretta from its hip holster as he once again began back pedaling. He raised the gun just in time to meet the forehead of the first of the infected and pulled the trigger. As soon as the black-eyed man dropped out of sight, he was trampled by the infected behind him. This caused several of them to trip over the dead infected, and after Jake shot one black-eyed woman on his left and a black-eyed man on his right, he had his window, and he took it.
Jake spun around—this time it was a successful turn. Standing outside of a gray Chevy SUV was Bryan, and he began firing to the left of Jake.
“Run straight or I’ll hit you!” Bryan shouted.
Jake did, digging for that extra gear. The adrenaline coursing through him from certain death lurking behind him accelerated him even further. Especially with an innocent young girl draped across his shoulder. The back door opened, and a hand began waving him in. Bryan continued to fire and Jake continued to run. The stench of deadly were infected hot on his heels. He was close enough now that Bryan stopped shooting, got back in the SUV, and slammed the door. Another black SUV’s tires began to spin and it sped out of the gas station parking lot.
Jake made it to the SUV and with a hunched over dive, wrapping Amy in his arms, he flew through the open door, and slid on his side onto the leather of the bench backseat. The first line of the mass of infected began slamming into the SUV as it started to pull away when Tyler slammed the gas pedal. Bryan started to shoot out of his window, but one of the infected had a hold of the luggage rack above the door and his feet on the running board under the door.
“It’s coming in!” Jess shouted from the third row.
Jake dropped Amy to the floorboard of the back seat, grabbed the center console between the two front seats with his left hand, and the back of the back seat in his right hand for leverage. He squeezed both hands tight, and as he pulled back his right leg with a bend of the knee, he thrust himself forward and put his boot in the middle of the infected man’s chest. The monster went flying off the side of the SUV and took out several other infected that were running behind him on the way down. Bryan reached out of his window and pushed the back door shut just as Jake pulled himself back inside.
“Which way? Which way!” Tyler shouted.
Jake sat up and saw the black SUV that had left first with Mark, Jason, and TW inside waiting at the side of US Highway 23 for direction.
“Left! Make a left!”
Tyler wheeled around the waiting SUV and dodged a plethora of abandoned vehicles as he followed Jake’s direction. The road was so jumbled coming out of the busy intersection that Tyler was forced to drive along in the grassy median. Even then there was some maneuvering he had to do around abandoned cars. Jake looked through the back window, and the second SUV was right behind them. The angry mob of alien-infested bodies not far behind them, but they were able to go fast enough to put some distance between them. And to finally be able to take a breath.
“Is she all right?” Jess asked.
Jake squeezed between the front passenger seat and the backseat as he moved Amy onto her back up on the backseat bench.
“I don’t know. The second they stopped looking to the sky, she went limp. I think she held them off as long as she could.”
“You think she saved us too?” Jess said. She was still breathing hard and covered in sweat from the run. All of them were.
Before Jake could answer, Jess gasped. “Jake, your bleeding! Are you all right?”
Bryan and Tyler both turned in concern.
“They didn’t bite you, did they?” Tyler said.
“Watch out for that truck!” Bryan shouted. “Eyes on the road!”
The SUV swerved, but they didn’t hit anything. Jake looked down at his left side where Jess was looking. He lifted his black T-shirt that was covered in blood. There was a nice size gash there just above his hip bone. In the midst of the adrenaline, he hadn’t felt a thing.
“I’m fine. It’s just a cut.” That was when he felt something sharp poking his leg. He looked down and saw the blade of his axe resting on his calf muscle. He reached down, unhooked the axe, and held it up. “Must have fallen on this when I jumped in the SUV.”
“You okay, man?” Tyler said.
“I’m fine.”
“It’s bleeding pretty good,” Jess said.
“I’m fine. Can we focus on making sure Amy’s okay?”
Jess reached over the back of the seat and felt at Amy’s neck for a pulse. “She has a heartbeat. I think she’s okay.”
Jake felt a rush of relief as he glanced up at Jess. “To answer your question, yes. I do think she saved us.”
“But how?” Jess brushed Amy’s hair away from her face.
“I don’t know.”
Tyler said, “What the hell were they doing back there? The aliens?”
“That what we’re calling them now for sure?” Bryan said. “Aliens?”
Jake understood the cynicism in Bryan’s voice, but he also knew what he saw back there. And Amy being able to understand them meant they were definitely speaking some alien language. If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck . . .
“How could we not?” Tyler was animated. “You saw those black-eyed monsters. They’re getting smarter. They were waiting for us.”
Everyone took a moment to let that sink in.
“Can we get some more AC back here?” Jess said. “Amy is on fire. Like, abnormally hot.”
Bryan made an adjustment and the air blew harder out of the vents.
“So?” Tyler asked the question again. “What were they doing? All of them looking up to the sky like that? So creepy.”
Jake took off his shirt and wrapped it around his waist, tying it on one side to try and slow the bleeding from his cut. “Communicating,” was all he said.
That was when Amy sat straight up and screamed at the top of her lungs.
11
When Shelley’s voice came over the intercom, telling the three of them that the infected up on the surface were all doing the same thing as the three infected in front of her, Emily’s theory about a “hive mind” instantly became a reality. She backed away from the three infected strapped into their chairs staring up at the ceiling, and so did Elaine and David. The thought that something somewhere was able to communicate with them, all of them, all at the same time was hard for Emily to process. It went against everything she knew about how beings of any kind could communicate. What could something possibly be telling all of them to do? Emily had to figure this thing out, and she knew she needed to do it fast. If not, everyone who actually survived this tragedy would fall to the same fate sooner rather than later.
Emily was about to ask Elaine what the next move was when all three of the infected closed their mouths, lowered their heads, and violently began thrashing in their chairs. Karen let out an awful howling scream, and the two other infected men beside her did the same. Whatever information they just received, it made them more aggressive than they had been since Emily arrived in Mount Weather. And they were straining so hard to get free, it was as if they had somewhere they needed to be. Somewhere they had to be.
The screaming was unbearable.
“What do we do? I can’t listen to this much longer!” Emily shouted.
The sound of her voice raised their aggression level another notch. They were slobbering at the mouth to break loose.
“There’s Propofol in the lab, David!” Elaine told him.
David rushed out the door and went next door to the lab. Emily and Elaine set down their syringes and followed him out of the room. They could still hear the infected screaming, even through the thick glass door.
“What the hell was that?” Elaine said as she paced the hallway, rubbing her ears with her hands. “And what is that sound they are making?”
Emily collected herself. “Are we still going through with this? The Beritrix injection?”
“Yes. Of course. As soon as we can get them calm enough to inject.”
Emily nodded. It was what she wanted to hear. The only way they were going to get anywhere was if they started experimenting. She felt like they already had a massive head start with Beritrix acting as a vaccine. All they had to do now was see if it could act as a cure.
David returned with three syringes full of Propofol, a sedative that should at least allow them to get the Beritrix injected into the infected in the next few minutes. The hard part would be getting them the sedative. The infected’s limbs were strapped, but their heads weren’t. That had been a major mistake. But there was no way to know they would digress as they had. All of them had been completely docile for four days straight. From the looks of their aggression now, they might break their own necks to snap their jaws on anything that got near them.
“I think we’re going to have to restrain their heads somehow,” Emily voiced her thought.
The three of them re-entered the room. The screeching sound coming from the aliens’ mouths had not subsided.
“I think you’re right!” Elaine shouted over the noise. She turned to David. “Do you have a belt?”
David unbuttoned his lab coat and revealed a thick brown leather belt. Elaine nodded when he gave her an inquisitive look, then he removed the belt.
“Okay, David, you wrap the belt around Karen’s forehead and pull back with both hands. I’ll hold the upper arm steady, and Emily you get that needle into the vein. Got it?”
“Don’t you think we should use a different chair, or maybe get Karen onto a gurney? That way we can make sure to strap her head down properly?” Emily said.
“Wouldn’t we have to sedate her to get her on that gurney?”
Emily looked over at Karen. Her black eyes looked as if they might pop out of her head she was straining so hard to break free. The veins in her neck looked more like the roots of a tree. Elaine was right. But getting close to these infected without making certain they couldn’t shake loose would be a mistake. Emily could feel it in her bones. But ultimately, this was Elaine’s lab, and Elaine’s rules. And though Emily would certainly have found a way to get Karen into a proper place to administer the Propofol, she wanted the screaming to stop so bad she was willing to take the risk.
Emily nodded and took a syringe of Propofol from David. David walked over behind Karen and looped the belt around her forehead, right across her eyebrows. He pulled down and back, a hand on each end of the belt, and gave a nod.
“You ready?” Elaine asked Emily.
“No.” Emily was honest. But she followed Elaine over to Karen anyway. David wasn’t a large man by any means, so his stamina probably wouldn’t last very long. And they had two more infected to inject after her.
Elaine grabbed Karen’s right bicep with both hands. Karen’s head lurched forward toward Elaine, but David was able to pull back. Elaine backed away for a moment and took a deep breath. “Let’s do this quick!”
Emily took a step closer. Karen was fighting with all she had. Elaine held up three fingers, dropped to two, then one, then moved in. When she grabbed Karen’s bicep this time, she twisted, giving Emily a better angle on the vein at the bend in her arm. Emily moved in. Karen’s veins were popping up from the straining she was doing, so finding the vein wasn’t an issue. She slid the needle inside, depressed the plunger, and she and Elaine jumped back out of the way before David finally let her head go.
“Let’s just keep this moving,” Elaine said. “Karen should start to really calm down by the time we are finished with these two.”
They moved on to the second infected, who they were calling John Doe One. Not original, but unlike Karen, the other two infected captured had no ID. So they kept it simple. This infected man was no bigger than Karen really. He was skin and bone, dark hair, a look that Emily could imagine maybe was that of an accountant. Especially the dark parted hair, pocketed short-sleeve shirt, probably a couple pens always tucked there. Now of course the alien inside the poor guy had made him look more like a veiny, black-eyed Halloween-costume-gone-wrong.
David wrapped the belt in the same place on John One that he had on Karen and leaned back. Elaine gave Emily the countdown again, and Emily jumped in, plunged the Propofol, then backed away. John One was actually easier than Karen.
“Two down, one to go!” Elaine shouted.
It was hard to tell, because Karen was still moaning, but it seemed as though the volume of her screams had come down a notch. They moved on to John Doe Two. This guy looked like he used to be a football player, with big broad shoulders, probably six-foot-two, 230 pounds. His head was the size of a watermelon, and Emily could see the strain on David’s face when he began trying to pull back on John Two’s forehead with the belt. Elaine gave the same fingered countdown, then clamped onto John Two’s bicep.
Just as Emily moved in and was about to sink the needle through John Two’s grayish skin, John Two jerked his head forward and the belt slipped off his head. Emily, who was standing in front of John Two, saw this before Elaine. In fact, she saw his teeth sink into Elaine’s right arm before Elaine even noticed anything was wrong. The three infected had been making a lot of noise, but the scream that Elaine let out trumped them all.
Out of instinct, Emily grabbed Elaine by the left sleeve of her lab coat and yanked her away from John Two. There was no resistance, because he had already bit all the way through the outside of her shoulder.
“Elaine!” David shouted. “I’m so sorry! I couldn’t hold him!”
Elaine was white as a ghost. When she looked over at her shoulder, Emily had to catch her when she fainted. David rushed over to help lay her down on the floor, but they couldn’t stay there. Because when Emily looked back up at John Two. As he chewed on flesh and muscle like a cow chewing cud, he yanked so hard toward the three of them that the leather strap holding down his arm ripped in two.
He was about to break free.
12
Amy’s scream was so loud that Jake thought his eardrums might rupture. Everyone in the SUV jumped, then held their ears, because her shriek lasted a good four or five seconds. Jess moved her hands from her ears to Amy’s shoulders, and Amy nearly jumped out of her skin. She started breathing way too fast, and she was about to hyperventilate.
“You’re okay now, Amy,” Jess said. “You’re safe in the truck with us. Everything is okay.”
Amy was still breathing heavy, but in between she tried to speak. “No,” She panted. “I’m not okay.” Three more quick breaths. “None of us are.”
“I know it’s scary,” Jess continued in a soothing voice. “But we’re okay now. We’re on our way to Virginia. The infected are behind us.”
Amy shook her head emphatically. She gained control of her breathing to form a full sentence. “No they’re not. They’re all around us. And they know where I am.”
Jess flashed a look of concern to Jake. Jake knew she was thinking what he was. But he wanted to hear what Amy meant.
“Amy, did you keep them from attacking us back there?” Jake asked.
Jake saw Bryan turn around in the front seat, and Tyler did his best to drive while glancing back. They both were eager to hear.
Amy nodded. “I didn’t really mean too, I just started praying, and then I felt something flow through me. Almost like a current. I could see all of us on that road through their eyes.”
“What?” Tyler said. “That’s amazing! Now we can always know where they are and avoid them!”
Jake watched as Amy immediately shook her head no.
“Is that not what it means, Amy?” Jake asked.
“No. Well, yes . . .” She stopped for some more air. Her face wasn’t nearly as red as it had been back on the road.
“It’s okay,” Jess told her. “Take your time.”
Amy continued, “Yes it is true, I can see them. But they can also see me. There are a lot of them, and every single one could see where I was when I did that. Like, our exact location.”
“Unbelievable,” Tyler said. “We are living a movie right now. How the hell is this possible?”
Jake asked, “Do you know what they were doing when they all turned and looked up at the sky?”
Amy didn’t hesitate. “Listening.”
“Listening? To what?” Jake said.
Amy tucked her hair behind her ear. “Not to what. To who.”
Jake already knew what she meant. “By who, you mean the things we heard talking on the radio transmission that the professor recorded back at the university?”
“Yes. They are the leaders. And when I tapped into whatever their communication line is, they told everyone, all of the infected, that I was Element Zero. That they must terminate me.”
The SUV went quiet. Tyler had managed to pull back onto the road, but every few hundred feet he was forced onto the shoulder, and the buzz from the tires rolling over the rumble strips in the pavement made all of them jump every time. Jake and Jess shared a knowing glance. He was right earlier when he knew Jess shared his feeling. That if Amy could see through their eyes, they could see through hers. Jake wasn’t sure of how far the repercussions would extend, but if all of them knew where Amy—Element Zero—was, it could be catastrophic. He imagined if Element Zero was the alien’s only weakness, they would send everyone anywhere near Amy to end the threat. That in and of itself was scary, but the thought that the infected were much smarter now––and they might not show their hand before they attacked––made Jake shudder with worry.
