by Chris Lowry
“Foster,” I stopped in front of him. “Is that your name?”
“It's on his shirt,” Brian offered.
“He could have taken the uniform.”
“Sir,” he tried to stand up. “I'm Foster.”
“Stay seated until we clear this up.”
Byron passed him a can of soup, let him have two sips then took it away. Good protocol. Too much too fast and he would throw it all up. A waste of our resources.
And if his brain was turned to mush from five weeks of solitary confinement in the dark, we didn't have resources to waste on him.
I listened to the boys behind me load the two trucks they had backed to the doors. They were dividing the food and weapons as equally as they could manage.
“Are there uniforms inside?”
Foster raised a weak hand toward one of the Quonset huts. It shook like he had palsy. Brain not quite mush.
“Take Byron and get him some cover,” I told Brian. “Get some for all of us.”
Byron passed me the soup can and racked the slide on his newly acquired weapon. He started for the hut.
“Careful,” I called after him.
“We will,” Brian said. “You can bet on it.”
He jogged after the boy and I watched them almost the whole way then turned back to Foster.
“How much do you remember?” I asked. “Are you all here?”
I tapped the side of my head. His eyes perked up with understanding and his cheeks were starting to get some color back. The soup was working a little magic in his depleted systems.
I let him take two more sips, then followed it with a swallow of water.
“We were here at the beginning,” he rasped.
His voice got stronger with each word. He hadn't used it in weeks, except to cry or scream.
“They called up our unit to handle crowd control. We were bringing in people from all over.”
“Florida?” I pawed his arm and he gasped in pain. I reminded myself to let go and calm down. It almost worked.
“Just in state I'm pretty sure,” he said and rubbed his bruised forearm.
I gave him another sip of soup and followed it with water.
“We built the tent city but someone must have died, or hidden their bite. They were supposed to be screened before we let them in, but there was just too many people. So many people.”
“When?”
“That first week,” he stuttered through it. Talking must be taxing his system and he was starting to look peaked again.
“Just a few more questions, then we're going to bundle you up in the truck and take you out of here.”
He started crying then, silent tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. I let him.
“I want to go home,” he huffed.
I looked at him closely. He couldn't have been much older than eighteen, just a kid who signed up in high school to help out his country and community. He looked a decade older, circumstance being the time killer it can be.
“Where was home?”
He looked up at the word was.
“Was?”
I debated a second to tell him. He had been trapped for just over five weeks, no contact with the outside.
“We haven't been everywhere,” I told him. “But a lot of the places we've been are just like this. We came up from Orlando and it's gone. Atlanta is gone. A lot of the major cities have gone Z. We keep finding pockets of survivors, but...”
I trailed off.
“I'm from Birmingham,” he said. “Guess it's gone too?”
I shrugged.
He started crying again, still quiet. I guess being trapped in a room with Z outside the door scratching to get in every time you made a sound taught you to be real quiet real quick.
“What did you hear about the rest of the country?”
“We lost comm the day before I got trapped.”
I let him sip some more water and wished we had a calendar. I'm not sure what I'd do with it, or even why the information would help me. Did smaller cities survive better? Based on the little towns we cruised through size didn't matter. Small, large, medium they were all affected.
People turned Z and the survivors got out.
“How fast does the virus react?”
“Virus?”
“You said you were checking for bites. Is it transmitted by bites?”
He shrugged.
“Our medic didn't have a clue. No one did. We called the CDC, but if my Captain knew something, he didn't tell us. He went, what did you call it? Z. He went Z before he briefed us. My sergeant came in the front door and started biting people. He came for me and I locked myself in the office. Every time I opened the door to try and get out, someone new was in the hall trying to get me. Then the power went out... I tried to keep up with the days, but I don't know...”
His head nodded. He was exhausted, the food in his stomach pumping nutrients through his starved system. His body wanted to shut down and go to sleep so it could heal and repair.
I'd been there during ultramarathons. It was hard to resist. I helped him up and half carried, half supported him around the truck and into the passenger seat.
“How many refugee cities?” I asked as I settled him in.
“Three in Alabama,” he sighed.
His heavy eyes were drooping closed.
“Any others you know about?”
He tried to raise a hand and point again.
“Map in HQ,” he breathed out and was gone. He snored lightly as his head lolled back.
Brian and Byron showed up with handfuls of uniform jackets, enough for all of us. Byron tossed me one for Foster and took Bock back to supply to get more.
I wrapped the coat like a blanket around Foster and hopped down.
“HQ,” I told Brian and grabbed one of the rifles.
He followed me toward the other hut.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Did you check on him?”
“You saw him in the truck.”
“Not the soldier,” said Brian as we approached the wooden door set into the side of the wall of the arched hut.
A Quonset hut looks like a barrel halfway buried in the ground and were used in the second world war and Korea. They fell out of rotation in most places and were replaced by simple modular structure buildings, but you could still find them in use all over the south and on older bases that escaped the budget cuts under each series of Presidents.
Alabama either had a strong senator on a committee who kept federal money flowing into their NG programs or it was a strong state supported unit. The fact that they put a refugee city at this location said something to that effect.
They didn't use that money in upgrades to the facilities though.
The metal roof was painted so many times it looked like that was all that was holding it together. The wooden door had a fresh coat of paint, the rocks lining the walkway were painted white and covered in five weeks of dust.
It looked dirty and untouched.
I wondered what was inside.
“The kid,” Brian said. “He was bit.”
I sighed. A kid had taken a bite to the arm and I forgot to check on him. Was he one of the one's loading the truck? Where had they stashed him?
I asked Brian.
“He's sitting beside the armory.”
We would check on him when we got back. Being bit was a problem. It's why we all wore long sleeves and layers. If we ran across body armor in this compound, we would steal it to use too. I'd put everyone in riot gear if I could, and if we ever made it into a city, I'd raid the museum to steal the armor collection. We would clunk around all night like Knights.
At least we would be safe.
“After,” I nodded to the door and stopped short.
“What are you going to do to him?” Brian said in a low voice, like he was afraid of being overheard.
“After,” I growled and he took a step back. “Open the door.”
“Alright, don't bi
te my head off.”
Then he realized what he said and frowned. I bet he was thinking about apologizing, but I wasn't the one Z bit.
“Open the door,” I headed him off. “Stand aside.”
I checked the magazine, made sure the selector was on single shot and raised it to my shoulder. Brian tried the door. It was locked.
“Kick it.”
“I can't kick in a door.”
“Kick the knob.”
“Oh,” he lifted a boot and kicked the knob. He howled and hopped around on one foot. The door didn't budge.
“I think I broke something.”
“Over there,” I pointed him out of the way with the rifle and took three fast steps toward the door. I slammed the bottom of my boot into the knob, knocked it through the hole and shattered the doorjamb.
My kick wasn't much stronger than Brian's, but it was all about placement. I bounced back as the door creaked open and four skeletons shambled out.
I let them walk toward me and dropped them with a shot each.
Four soldiers who starved to death and came back to life. No visible wounds. They must have gone to sleep and never woke up.
“No wounds,” said Brian.
He noticed too. After the Z wars, you paid attention to those sort of things.
“They were starving too. Starved,” he added.
“Did you bring a torch?”
He shook his head and grinned a sheepish smile.
I didn't have to say anything for him to run back to the armory and build two torches to bring back. He lit them with shaking hands.
“I hate going into the dark.”
I knew what he meant. We were always inside before dark, locked up and hiding behind curtains and walls. It was hard to see in the dark, hard to fight, harder to run.
Volunteering to go into dark places was rolling the dice. The odds might work out the first couple of times, but it was always a fifty fifty shot on getting attacked.
I liked my fifty percent chances with a machine gun though.
“Hold them both,” I told him. “High. We're looking for a map.”
We stepped through the door into the torchlit darkens and a thought hit me. What if the map was on a computer?
The hut was a wide-open space with a sectioned off back. Shelves lined one wall, and maps lined the other. A map of Alabama, a map of the Southeast, and a full map of the USA. All paper, and all covered with pins.
The pins had different colors, all of the details hard to make out in the orange torch light, especially with Brian spinning slowly to keep an eye on our backs, and to keep aiming the light in different directions as the shadows split and moved.
“Just grab what you need and let's get going to the Speedway,” he said. Worry tinged his voice along with fear.
“Get Byron and three more to come in here.”
He passed a torch to me and rushed out of the doorway. The absence of the second light made the shadows even darker, the flickering’s even more frightening. I held the flame over a desk full of three ring binders and orders and wished I had the time and light to go through it all.
There might be answers in there. Maybe not answers to what caused the plague. But they might provide some insight into where to look.
After Arkansas.
I fought down the roiling pain in my gut as the feelings washed up again. Did I sacrifice one child to save two? Or did I lose all three by waiting? By picking the wrong direction?
“We're here,” Byron called from the doorway.
I looked up from the desk and a Z slammed into me, bowled me over onto the concrete floor.
Another scarecrow body, skeletal jaws snapping at my neck and face. The dropped torch caught the sleeve of my canvas jacket on fire, caught the dry thin BDU on the Z on fire.
Byron pounded across the floor and lined up a kick into the side of the zombie's head. He must have played soccer because the toe connected with a beautiful snap and the head disconnected from the thin neck and bounced across the floor.
We shoved the burning body off me and I slid out of the smoldering jacket.
The arm inside was warm but untouched. Too close to getting burned again.
I shivered.
“Anymore in here?” Byron aimed with his rifle, searching the dark corners.
“Eyes up,” I said. “That one was a sneaker.”
“What do you need us for?”
Brian led the others in, his torch casting a circle of light around them. I picked up the stuttering torch that almost gave me problems and relit it from his.
“Grab the maps, leave the pins, so be careful,” I gave orders. “We want the binders too. Take it all.”
“Do we have time for this?” Brian worried.
“We'll make time. There could be information in there we need.”
“You need.”
He was pouting. And worried. I couldn't blame him.
“You need. You want your fort to stay safe and there are a couple thousand Z right outside your gate. How long would it take them to walk there if they got out? What if there's another infected refugee center close by? If there's information in there, we need to know it so you can be prepared for it.”
“Look,” Brian snapped. “Don't use logic and reason to try to convince me we need it. I'm pissed and I want to save my wife.”
“Wife?”
“Girlfriend. Woman, whatever we are to each other now. I want to save her.”
“I'm with him,” Byron said.
“Great. Both of you. And that's what we're doing. We got the guns to fight or trade. We have the food to trade. I'm going in there to get them. We're not coming back here, so load up the damn maps.”
My kids used to make fun of me for being angry all the time. I'd tell them it was just my face. Resting bitch face, or just the way I kept stoic as much as I could. I was mostly happy, most of the time.
I just never looked happy.
I looked like I was about to rip a head off and piss down a neck.
Mark it up to a receding hairline and a poker face.
There were times when it worked though. Like when someone cut in line before. Or in traffic.
Or now.
A glare could say a thousand words.
They rushed to gather it all, and after two trips brought the rest of the squad with them. They pulled every piece of paper in the place out in neat stacks and put it in the back of one of the trucks.
It took an hour and we were ready to be on the road. I pulled Byron aside.
“Where's the boy who was bitten?”
He couldn't look me in the eye, gulped and pointed. I walked over to him.
“Show me.”
He wouldn't look me in the eye either. He lifted the sleeve of his coat and shirt delicately to reveal the wound. It was purple and red and black, the blood clotted in the teeth mark, black lines running through his veins like gangrene.
“Can you feel it?”
“It's all numb.”
“Do you know what's going to happen?”
He took a deep breath and started crying. But he nodded.
“I can do two things,” I told him. “I can put you in the tent city with the other zombies and wait out a cure. Or I can shoot you.”
He cried harder, wiping the back of his eyes and nose on his sleeve. The bite was a death sentence, and it was easy to for him to feel sorry for himself. I would too. We all would.
I was being cruel, probably unnecessarily so.
“There's a third thing I've been thinking about.”
He looked up, tears and snot running down his face.
“Sir?”
“I could put you in that first room, and you could just go to sleep.”
“Sleep?”
“We have morphine in the med kit?”
Brian nodded.
“You'll pass out, like going to sleep,” I told him. “You can just nod off in a dark room and pretend it's nightime.”
“That sounds... pea
ceful.”
“It would be.”
“Better than a bullet in the brain.”
“And if we find a cure, you're still here when we come back.”
“Are you hunting for a cure, Sir?”
“I'm hunting. I'll take anything I can find.”
I let him mull it over. He was too young, fifteen I would guess. One year older than my son. An impossible decision to make. Blue eyes washed in teardrops watching me. Cheeks with red dots on them like a fever was coming on, and the arm hanging loose as the nerves went dead.
“What's your name?”
“Sean.”
“It's bed time Sean,” I told him. “Come with me.”
I pointed to Brian and he ran to get the med kit. I walked Sean to the door of the armory and the others followed behind us.
One by one they came up and said good night.
Not good bye. Good night. Like good men who listened.
They bumped fists, and hugged and shook hands, but each member of the squad took a moment, then walked away.
Except Byron.
Brian put two injectors in my hand. I motioned for the third and he passed it over.
Byron followed me into the first room I had opened up. The one that was empty.
He sat next to Sean, their backs against the wall, and held his hand. I clipped the tops to each of the injectors and pressed them against the boy's leg. There was a pneumatic hiss as the air compressor shot the drug into his system.
Then I rocked back on my heels and waited. We didn't say a word. Bryon gripped his hand and Sean slowly drifted to sleep.
His breathing grew more shallow, longer waits between breaths as his systems shut down and muscles froze up.
I stood up and Byron followed me out. We shut the door and left the boy in peace.
There were two trucks and a Recruiter's pickup truck waiting.
I wanted to drive by myself and no one argued against it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You can't go in by yourself,” Brian and Byron flanked me near the hood of the pickup truck. We were parked in the woods on the road that led to the Speedway and I wanted them moved out and away before someone stumbled on us.
