Rise & Walk (Book 2): Pathogen

by Gregory Solis

  “We’ll I’m not staying in there alone.” He said and started towards the hatch mumbling, “What the hell kind of a name is Jinxy anyways?”

  Landa May Rinks had gone by the name Jinxy since the age of thirteen. As far back as she could remember she hated her real name. It sounded to her like a great place to go Ice Skating, ‘Landa-Rinks,’ but not a proper name for a human being. When her mom remarried a beer-bellied, unkempt man named Duane June, the owner of the local bowling alley, the thirteen-year old almost ran away from home. She feared that she would have to also take his name and be known forever as Landa May June; not a shame she could live with. Landa hated a lot of things before her mom married Duane. She hated that she never knew her father. She hated that her drunken mother had no idea who her father was. She hated growing up under a leaky roof in a trailer park and having to change out the catch-buckets in the middle of the night. She hated waking to cold mornings in a tin-home that never seemed to get warm enough. There was also the shortage of everything, especially decent food that left her with little enjoyment in those formative years.

  Summers in Whisper were more tolerable. She didn’t wake up in the cold and have to fight off the desire to stay under her blankets. She would steal apples from Old Lady McCormack’s backyard; pears from Mr. Burrows’ front yard, and even pomegranates, split ripe in the sun from the window of little Timmy Erwin’s tree house, not for fun but added sustenance. The fruits were a welcome addition to a diet heavy on instant noodles, generic cheerios, and Friday’s fish-sticks. There wasn’t much Landa May could do about her situation. Even education seemed to hold little opportunity for those born tragically destitute. It’s hard for a kid to do well in school; to better oneself and escape their situation when they’re so often cold, tired, and hungry.

  But the community of Whisper had some programs to help local teens deal with boredom and stay out of trouble. The community found that providing funds for teens to keep busy was more cost effective then having their limited police force keep track of troubled kids. It was in one of these programs that Landa May found her salvation. On her thirteenth birthday, she entered the Whisper lanes bowling alley to take part in the teen bowling club. Every day from nine in the morning to five in the evening, the teens of Whisper could bowl, free of charge until their eighteenth birthday. Landa May quickly mastered the fundamentals and within two months had beaten every other member of the teen club. Not only did she show a masterful accuracy with her throw, but also had a knack for throwing others off their game with smart-assed remarks. When Duane June, saw her streak of wins, he proclaimed her bad-luck to any opponent. Bad-luck Rinks soon morphed into Jinx; which only lasted a week or so before she decided to embrace the idea. She altered the nickname further and Jinxy was born; a name she created, owned, and could be proud of.

  Duane, once a professional bowler in the eighties, told her that if she worked hard, she could become a professional too. At first she didn’t put too much faith in the disheveled man’s words. Her skepticism was bolstered by his liberal use of profane expressions. She would never forget how he put it; “If you have the balls, you’ve got a shot in the game.” He reeked of perpetual scotch-breath but he did earn a lot of money before drinking the bulk of it away. He told her that she could win big prize money if she made it to a tour. Jinxy had found hope that bowling could become her way out of Whisper; out of the leaky tin roof of her trailer park; out of the gutter.

  By the end of that summer, her mom had dumped her scumbag boyfriend Ricketts, and had slouched herself shamelessly towards Duane. They shacked up by Christmas and Jinxy had herself Twenty-four hour access to the alley. The situation was less than ideal but his home was a marked improvement over the trailer. Hearing their drunken activities in the bedroom was a stomach turning event that no thirteen-year-old should ever have endured, but at least she was warm. Jinxy found a way to adapt and keep practicing.

  It wasn’t long before Jinxy realized the hopes that Duane and her mom came to have for her career. Dollar signs seemed to reflect in their eyes when they looked at Jinxy, as so many parents of prodigies eventually do. Jinxy decided to use their greed to help herself. She started out with what would become an almost trademark bob of bright pink hair. Her shiny Cotton-candy-pink hair was unmistakable in Whisper. It was a statement that not only had she renamed herself, she had remade herself; more self-expression followed. Jinxy found her own style and her own confidence on and off the lanes. She eventually talked Duane into allowing her to live at the bowling alley. He built her a small room in the back, behind the pin-setting wall. It wasn’t quiet during operating hours but it was hers; quiet, warm, and dry at night.

  Jinxy’s mom passed away three days before her eighteenth birthday. She had passed out drunk in the kitchen of Duane’s home and split her head open on the stove. Laying on the floor unconscious, she had vomited and choked to death while Duane slept in a stupor just twenty feet away. Jinxy wasn’t surprised.

  She felt bad at losing her mom, but not as much as she thought she should. She knew on some level that she might have found her mom in time had she still lived at Duane’s home, but she couldn’t make herself feel guilty about it. She wanted to feel more, to cry, and miss her mom, but nothing stirred. The woman wasn’t ever really there for Landa May. After the funeral, she wondered what she would do. Duane, still struck by her cash-winning potential, told her that she could stay at the alley as long as she wanted if she would accept him as a partner. She remained at the alley and practiced like never before.

  Duane foot the bill for their trips to tournaments and once she started winning, she repaid him half her winnings. She thought that the trips also helped him with the loss of her mother; even fat old drunks get lonely, perhaps more so than the sober. Things had worked out well; better then ever actually. Duane was a decent coach before his drinking got going; which was usually the first three hours of practice or a tournament. Jinxy benefited from his professional experience and his gritty advice. He told her over and over that she had to be tough; that she had to have “balls” when dealing with the other bowlers. She appreciated how he never pretended to be her step-father. There was no mistaking that he was just a little bit disgusting; a perfect match for her drunk of a mother. But Duane treated her well and she couldn’t help but appreciate that.

  Sunday had been a day like many others for Jinxy. She had been practicing, as she did everyday, just wrapping up her third game of the morning when she heard a commotion from the lobby. Commotions, scuffles, even full on brawls, were not unusual in a bowling alley, but not during the daytime. She didn’t see Duane at the counter so she set down her ball and began walking to the lobby.

  Jinxy saw Dan Bridger, in his paramedic uniform struggling with another man, an out-of-towner by the look of him. Another Paramedic, she thought his name was Larry but she wasn’t sure, was almost hugging Duane. She flinched when she heard Duane cry out in agony as Larry seemed to be biting his neck like some hideous jumpsuit clad animal. The attacker pulled his head away, with it followed a scrap of flabby flesh. Blood squirted out in a small stream smearing on the man’s face as he chewed the bit of Duane in his mouth. Two other out-of-towners joined in and tried to separate Dan Bridger from the other man. Dan bit the smaller man twice on the shoulder before a tall black man punched him hard on the side of the head. She heard the other man say, “It’s like on the news?” and turn when Dan pulled him back down and bit him from behind. Jinxy screamed as Duane, his tee-shirt stained with his own blood, grunted and rammed his attacker, lifting him off his feet. Duane’s booze-blubbered form drove the hungry beast out the front door.

  She ran towards the front, to escape or perhaps to try and help Duane, she didn’t know which. As she reached the glass doors she saw the man that was technically her step-father, Duane June now prone, contort and spasm as his blood trickled into a rain gutter built into the sidewalk. His attacker rose from the twitching body and with bloody mouth agape, he approached the glass door.
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  Without thinking, Jinxy spun the door lock closed. The men struggling next to her succeeded in pushing Dan off their friend who was also a wounded mess. He coughed blood as his head fell back limp. The black man was in shock and called out to the fallen man. Dan growled another horrid, bubbly sound and moved forward. The sight was just too much for Jinxy. She ran to the desk and dialed Nine-one-one. When she saw that the two men were following her and Dan was following them, she decided to hide in the woman’s bathroom and let the cops deal with the situation. If she left the phone off the hook, the emergency operator would send the cops to investigate. With that plan, she led the two into the bathroom, the closest door with a deadbolt, and locked it behind them.

  Inside a small closet off the bathroom that held cleaning supplies, spare towels, and mops, was also a ladder to the attic. Jinxy had discovered it years ago while exploring. Inside the attic was a hatch the led to the roof. After about two hours without a police rescue, two hours of their assailants pounding on the door, Jinxy led the boys to the attic. It was up there that they could hear the news reports from the television in the bar, echoing through the hollow attic space. At first they didn’t believe what they heard about the spreading infection, until Gabe moved out into the dark areas of the attic. He lifted up a ceiling panel and saw with his own eyes, their friend Travis in such a state that infection wasn’t a question. He shambled about, followed by the paramedic. The gory pair quickly noticed Gabe, apparently by smell and moved underneath to claw at the empty air. If Gabe moved, they followed from below. Travis couldn’t follow Gabe back to the floored area above the bathroom. But even that wasn’t much comfort. Soon Jinxy showed them the roof. They watched in horror as Whisper fell to chaos. Gunshots pierced the night, screams of the living, growls of the dead, and the cars racing out of the area saw to it that no one had any sleep.

  During the next day, they napped uncomfortably inside the attic, taking turns sleeping and listening to the news coverage. The coverage began to change. Some reports spoke of the infected as having passed on; that the dead had risen to spread their infection. These reports were quickly dismissed by officials but as time passed, more and more spoke of the risen dead. The news was growing bleaker by the moment, and the attic seemed less of a sanctuary with the idea that the dead were ranging through the bowling alley. All three had ventured outside for some fresh air and a respite from the news.

  Jinxy couldn’t bring herself to look down on the front of the building knowing that Duane was out there. If what they’d heard on the television was true then he would be up and around; a walking corpse. He was locked behind the front doors, the deadbolt on the bathroom, the boxes she had piled on the attic hatch, and the hatch to the roof and still Jinxy couldn’t help but think of him walking around. She didn’t think much of the man at the beginning, but after losing her mother, and his small kindnesses, she felt awful for the man. No one should have to spend eternity like that.

  Eight

  Fifty miles north of Barstow California on a fifty square mile rectangle of private land stood the Richardson Arms Manufacturing’s Southern California Research and Development facility. Alexandra Devereaux exited the main research facility and marched her three-inch patent leather pumps the requisite one-hundred feet to the blue line on the pavement signifying the smoking safe area. She pushed a highlighted strand of auburn hair over the Bluetooth communicator in her left ear and lifted a Camel light to her lips. The night was quiet and the wind still; only the soft hum of the main building’s ventilation system was heard. The cigarette crackled as she inhaled the flame. The smoke was hot and satisfying. She let out the drag with a stressful sigh and looked to the south. He would be arriving soon; Gavin Richardson; the old man. She shook her head and took another drag. Even under the best of circumstances a visit from the Chairman was loathsome to her.

  Her facility had been rocked by the events unfolding around the world. Alexandra had done her best to set an example for her staff by remaining calm through the ordeal. Many of her staff had decided to depart the facility to be with family members. Alexandra helped to coordinate their departure and organize transportation in groups for added security. A number of her scientific, engineering, and security personnel lived on site and stayed on for the safety of the secure facility. As the last group of three vehicles departed the outer gate, Alexandra was left with some seventy-eight souls on staff under her care.

  As of thirty-six hours ago, their directive had changed from research and development on new weapons systems for military applications to one of information gathering. Richardson had personally called her to order the shift. He wanted the ‘Skunks’, a term used for the scientists and engineers, to put their creative minds to use digging up any information on this unnatural disaster.

  She had given the staff their directive. She split them into teams to monitor communications across the globe, theorize on possible strategies for dealing with the problem, and coordinate with any government agencies to keep the flow of information moving. If the Skunks came up with an idea, she wanted the right agencies to be reachable. Communication shouldn’t be a problem. Richardson Arms Manufacturing had access to government and private communications satellites and priority channels on both French and Japanese satellites. Being one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers had its perks.

  What concerned Alexandra was a set of private orders from Richardson. His son Lance had been unreachable since the initial outbreak. Contact with the entire town had been lost and Gavin Richardson wanted that contact re-established right away. Information on Lance had become her personal number-one priority.

  In her years at the company she had occasion to meet the old man’s kid twice which left her unimpressed. In fact it irritated her that Richardson’s brat was placed in charge of the Whisper facility for no merit other than having been born the son of a rich man. Not that she would have wanted to run the plant herself. It was just a high capacity manufacturing facility for ammunition; NATO rounds mostly and shotgun shells, nothing interesting. But it did burn her to read reports on the plant’s performance and know that Lance was careless with his operation; careless or incompetent. He cost the company money and should have been replaced years ago. She knew that would never happen; every member on the board knew that Lance was untouchable if only to keep his father happy. But none of that should matter to her. She wasn’t interested in what was best for RAM.

  Alexandra had a personal agenda within Richardson’s company. Her father, a Senator from California, had been an ally, and then later a rival of Richardson well before she was born. Her mother had always been less then forthcoming with the details but over the years Alexandra had pieced together a rough idea of their relationship. For some reason, before her mother left the Senator, he had led a movement to bar RAM from certain government supply contracts, costing Richardson millions. Less then a month later, and five month before her birth, her father was found dead. F.B.I. reports and a very thorough Secret Service investigation showed that Senator Bryan McGuire died of an accidental overdose of pain medication while drinking alcohol. Alexandra’s mother was vague; even elusive with the facts of their marriage but she was firm about one thing, Senator McGuire didn’t like to drink. Alexandra had studied Richardson since her teens. She had plotted her infiltration into the company since high school. It was her mother’s strange paranoia about the past that gave Alexandra an advantage in hiding her identity. Perhaps fearing for the safety of the late Senator’s daughter, Alexandra’s mother had given her child her maiden name at birth and never named a father on the birth records. Before college, when her plan was forming, Alexandra had taken her grandmother’s name to insure no official link to her lineage. Her goal had always been to attain such a position within RAM that she could get a good look at its secrets, its dirty tricks, political payouts, and discover where enough of the bodies were buried that she could damage the company from within. Even if Richardson wasn’t involved in her father’s death, Alexandra’s
mother herself blamed his political attacks on her father for ending their marriage. Her mother always seemed burdened by guilt when she spoke of the past; guilt for leaving her father before even telling him that he was about to have a child. As a teen, Alexandra decided that Gavin Richardson was responsible for her parent’s hardships and would pay for hurting her family.

  Unfortunately, her goals required her to become a tireless and faithful company employee. She had been very careful over the past twelve years to not get ahead of herself, not to blow the whistle too early over small bad-business practices. She was in this for the long haul and wouldn’t go to the newspapers and authorities until she had Richardson in Checkmate.

  But now the old man was coming to her bailiwick. This wouldn’t be another inspection where he would drop by and set the facility on edge for a day while making Alexandra uncomfortable with his praise of her work. She was good at her job; she knew that. One didn’t rise to run their own operation in RAM without earning it; unless you were the boss’s kid that is. And that was the reason for the old man’s visit. He was going to personally take possession of one of the facility’s UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters to fly north and search for his son. Alexandra puffed again and let out a frustrated cloud of smoke. Richardson wanted a fully armed Blackhawk, with its automatic weapons and rocket pods prepared to leave in the morning. Son of a bitch!

  The Blackhawks were fully outfitted with military hardware on loan from the Army for testing of RAM’s Hades II rocket systems. They were serious birds and not for private use. Under normal circumstances the Army would take serious action over such a gross misappropriation of assets, filing charges and assessing penalties, but with the current situation she was sure they’d be too busy to notice. Ultimately she was the Executive of Record responsible for the aircraft however Richardson was her superior. She planned to make the case that she relinquished the bird on his orders and add the action to her Whistleblower file as yet another abuse of authority.