by Ricky Sides
When Agent Marx saw Herb pull into position in his rear view mirror, he resumed speed. “You’d better call him and let him know that we don’t have our rear vehicle in view,” Herb told Erma.
She relayed the message and the agent once more slowed his vehicle.
Erma’s phone rang as Herb was braking to match the agent’s speed. It was Sam. He said that they had been sideswiped by a vehicle that forced them off the road. They were okay, but their vehicle was out of commission. She promised to contact Agent Marx and see what he wanted to do.
Marx cursed when he heard the news. “We’ll have to take the next exit and double back,” he said.
They managed to exit onto North Halstead Road, west of Salina, and then get back on the eastbound lane of I-70. It took them over two hours to reach the stranded scientists. The three men scrambled into the car with Agent Marx. They left their clothing behind. It was too dangerous to attempt to get luggage. As it was, the trailer was almost hit by the insane press of traffic multiple times during their brief stop.
This time, Agent Marx moved with the flow of traffic. They made good time, and the traffic seemed to be diminishing a bit. They all thought things were improving. Then they reached Russell, Kansas and ran right into the middle of stalled traffic.
Herb’s truck was a high profile vehicle. As such, he sat higher than Agent Marx, and had a clearer view of the traffic ahead. As they neared the exit to Russell, his eyes widened, and he said, “Get Marx on the phone. Tell him he’d better pull over now!”
Erma noted a sense of urgency in Herb’s tone of voice, so she did as he instructed. As she was making the call, Herb began to tap his brakes repeatedly to let the driver behind him know that he was about to stop. He saw Marx pulling over and he did the same.
When the vehicle rolled to a stop, Herb was out the door and racing toward the agent in his government vehicle. He told Marx what he had seen up ahead and then he ran back to the truck. “We’ve got to turn around and head back,” he told Erma.
“Why?” she asked.
“The traffic is stalled up ahead of us. You can’t see it from here, but I saw it just before we stopped. There’s a massive stall ahead, and it is swarming with people. Unless I miss my guess, most of those people are zombies.”
“There’s nowhere to turn around,” Erma pointed out.
“See how flat the median is here?” asked Herb.
“Yes, but look at the traffic behind us.”
“It’s busy, I know, but we have to try. We’ll get in the left lane and turn. As you can see, the eastbound lane is empty at the moment. That’s because of the traffic jam ahead.”
There wasn’t time to discuss it further. Agent Marx pulled onto the highway in an opening that gave him room to go all the way to the left lane. He then slowed as he drove across the median and executed a turn. His car had bottomed out, but managed the maneuver. He stopped in the empty stretch of highway and waited for Herb.
It seemed to Herb that they would never catch the open space they needed to execute their set of maneuvers to make good their escape. Meanwhile, the stalled traffic kept backing up the highway toward their truck. By now, it had reached the point that they could see the cars braking to a halt. They could also see figures moving through the maze of parked cars now filling the highway to the west.
Finally, Herb caught the break in traffic that he needed and he managed to get the trailer back into the eastbound lane. Agent Marx called and said that they were going to the Russell Municipal Airport, which was located just a few miles away. Once there, they would regroup and try to come up with another plan.
“You may not have any choice but to risk flying with the computers and prototype,” Herb said grimly. “I can’t see us making this drive. It’s just getting too dangerous. It’s a miracle we haven’t lost the trailer already.”
“I know. I’ve seen at least a dozen near misses this morning already,” Erma acknowledged.
“I know you don’t want to do it that way, but at this point, I’d say it’s your only viable option.”
“Unfortunately, I think you’re right. I’ll tell the agent we will try it, if he still wants to and can arrange a flight. We can begin breaking down the electronics when we get there.”
“I think that’s the best thing to do under the circumstances. I hope it’s not too late to get helicopters that can make the run, deliver the gear, and transport you all to the base.”
Chapter 22
Decisions
Randy watched the woodline nervously as Amy continued to milk the cow. The young woman had only been at the task a few seconds when he thought he’d heard that strange huffing sound that he had heard the previous day. Henry had called it a sound an adult bear would make when it was angry. Therefore, he was taking no chances. He stood with his M4 at the ready.
“I’m almost finished,” Amy said as she noted his tense posture.
“Good,” he responded. He thought he saw a limb shake to the right and shifted his attention in that direction. He didn’t hear Ox trot up behind him and was surprised when he turned and saw the dog sitting there staring at him.
“Ox, I didn’t hear you come up behind me. Next time, bark or something.”
The dog lolled its tongue out and yawned, as if he were sleepy or bored.
“He’s probably hungry,” Amy observed as she stood up from milking the cow. “We’d better get this milk in to Martha so she can strain and pasteurize it. We’ll need to feed him and then collect the eggs.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Randy replied. He felt better about Amy being outside the cabin now that Ox had returned.
They fed and watered the dog, and then Randy escorted Amy as she went to the makeshift chicken coop to see if the hens had laid any eggs. They only found four, but Amy wasn’t worried. “They’ve been through a lot the past few days. They’ll settle in and start laying regularly soon.”
They carried the eggs inside and closed the door.
Martha took possession of the eggs, which she would use to make breakfast. She had a skillet with potatoes and onions frying on the wood burning stove. Biscuits were in the oven, and a pan of gravy simmered on the stovetop. Martha washed the eggs in the sink and then she checked her potatoes and found them done enough to add the eggs.
When the dish was ready the vegetables added to the eggs would stretch their meager supply into a filling and nutritious meal. The gravy and biscuits, along with some jelly, would top off the meal.
The four people had just finished eating breakfast when Ox began to bark on the porch. Randy got to his feet and moved toward the door. Ox’s barking changed to a menacing growl as Randy reached for the door.
“Hold up there, son,” Henry warned him. “It has been my experience that dogs bark until something closes with them, and then they change to a growl. That’s not always the case, but it most often is.”
“I’ll go topside and see what I can see,” Randy said. He climbed the ladder and entered the bell tower with his rifle. He couldn’t see anything in front of the cabin, but that meant nothing because he couldn’t see the dog either. He took a rope the men had left in the tower in case they ever needed to get down to the ground and tossed it out onto the roof.
Randy didn’t like heights, but he knew he needed to make his way toward the edge of the roof so he could see what was happening on the ground. He took the precaution of wrapping a loop of the rope around his waist and tying it, so that he wouldn’t fall off the roof.
During Randy’s preparations, Ox’s growls had gained in volume and savagery. As he inched his way down to the edge of the roof cautiously, the growls changed pitch again, causing Randy to believe that the dog was about to attack something. The rope stopped his forward progress, but he thought he was close enough to see what was happening. He leaned his upper body forward, trusting the rope to support his weight.
Looking over the edge of the roof, Randy saw Ox backing away from a large black bear that was standing on its hind legs a
nd moving toward the dog. The bear’s muzzle and chest were coated in blood, as were its front paws. It was obvious to Randy that the animal had been engaging in battles, and from the looks of it, a lot of them. He was about to fire at the bear when he spotted movement with his peripheral vision.
Randy shifted his attention to the drive that led to the house, and what he saw made his blood run cold. He left the bear to Ox and hurried back up the slope of the roof to the bell tower.
“Henry!” he yelled down the opening. “We’ve got a good dozen zombies heading up the drive, and the bear is out front!”
His warning shouted, Randy turned and began to target the zombies. He managed to shoot three, but then he heard Amy scream from inside the house. He was moving toward the ladder when a shotgun blast sounded.
Randy descended the steps in record time. When his feet touched the floor, he turned and looked around the cabin. He saw Henry backing out of one of the bedrooms, pulling Martha by the arm as he did so.
Randy rushed over to the doorway as Henry and Martha moved clear of it. He saw Amy with a terrified expression on her face. She was staring at her arm, which was bleeding. A dead zombie lay on the floor beside her. It looked to Randy as if Henry had placed the muzzle of his shotgun against its forehead and pulled the trigger. “Get up to the bell tower!” Randy shouted at the frightened woman. When she didn’t move, he grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “Amy! Listen to me! You need to get up to the tower! Do it now!”
Amy blinked a couple of times, and then she seemed to comprehend what he’d been saying. She nodded her head and moved toward the doorway.
“Tell the others to get up there too,” he added.
Randy moved past the dead zombie and looked out the shattered window that the creature had broken through. He saw more of the zombies outside. They were moving toward the window. He opened fire from his position. In the fifteen seconds of that fight, Randy managed to kill all seven of the zombies he saw in the area. Only one reached the window, and it fell before it could reach inside the cabin.
A crash from the living room area informed Randy that he had another problem. He ejected the partial magazine from his rifle, extracted a fresh one from a pouch he’d equipped earlier when preparing to guard Amy, and inserted it into the magazine well.
Moving into the living room with the muzzle of his rifle facing his line of sight, he saw two zombies who were struggling to get through the broken window at the same time. Their grotesque faces stared at him with an avid hunger as they moaned in anticipation. One was a fat man that Randy thought must weigh around 300 pounds. The other was a mousy man with a scraggly beard and small beady eyes. Both had apparently died of their infestation, because they bore no outward wounds that would indicate they had fallen to zombies and turned as a result. If they hadn’t blocked each other so effectively, both could have entered the house in the time it took him to get there. He shot them in the head once each. They collapsed with their upper bodies inside while their legs were outside the cabin.
He heard Henry’s shotgun fire up on the roof and moved to the cabin door. If he had counted correctly, there should only be a couple of zombies left.
Randy took a calculated risk. He unlocked the door, and then threw it open. Then he rushed out across the porch, turning first to the right and then to the left, looking for targets that were near him. Seeing none, he focused his attention further out where he saw a pair of zombies crawling toward the cabin. Apparently, Henry’s shotgun blast had wounded both in the legs. As he sighted in on one of the creatures, Henry’s shotgun fired again, blowing apart its head. Randy shifted to the remaining crawler and terminated it with a shot to the forehead.
Breathing hard from the furious action, Randy studied the surrounding area, seeking targets, but there was nothing to be seen beyond the dead zombies. “Do you see Ox and the bear?” he shouted up to Henry.
“The dog led that bear back into the woods!” Henry yelled in reply.
“I guess you folks can come down now. It looks as if it’s over for the moment,” Randy said.
“We’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do,” Randy said to himself as he stared at the dead zombies and thought of those that had just contaminated the cabin.
The two men tied ropes to the zombies and pulled them out of the house, and then they searched every inch of the kill zones for tissue fragments, which they collected and threw in a bag, along with the latex gloves they had worn. That material would be buried with the corpses. They sprayed a strong disinfectant on the spots to kill any residual parasites that might be lingering on the damp surface of the floors and walls.
Henry used a scoop attachment, mounted on the tractor, to dig a trench that they could use to bury the zombies. When the mass grave with its grizzly contents was covered by several feet of dirt, they turned their attention to repairing the cabin and ensuring that the windows wouldn’t be a point of vulnerability in the future. They covered all of the windows with heavy wooden planks they found shoved under the floor of the cabin.
Throughout their labors, one of the men was on guard while the other worked. They couldn’t discount the possibility that other zombies might locate them.
As they repaired the last window, Henry said, “You haven’t said what you plan to do about Amy. Martha and I have known her since she was a child, so we’d like to know.”
“Do about what?” Randy asked, not understanding what the man had on his mind.
“She was bitten, so we want to know if you intend to shoot her now, or wait until she turns?”
Randy dropped the hammer he was using to seal the windows. “I thought she got cut, or that maybe some of your pellets hit her arm,” he explained.
Henry shook his head, indicating that that was not the case. “I wish it was something that simple,” he replied.
“We wait!” Randy said fiercely. “You heard what Erma said. The nanobots will cure her,” he said in a quieter tone of voice.
“If they can be made in time,” Henry said, amending Randy’s comment for him.
“Where there is life, there is hope. A dead person has none,” Randy pointed out.
“We’ll need to be careful,” Henry cautioned.
“I know.”
“Once she gets the fever and starts to cough, she can spread it.”
“I know,” Randy said again.
“She’ll be terrified. The next few days will probably put her through hell. It might be more compassionate to save her that mental pain,” Henry advised.
“Can you do it? I ask because I don’t think I can,” Randy said.
“No, not me,” the old man said with a sad expression on his face.
“Good, because I don’t think I’d let you,” Randy stated firmly. “I say we wait for Herb to get back. He may know something that we can do to save her. Maybe he’ll come back with a backpack full of the nanobots.”
***
Herb stopped the truck beside Agent Marx’s vehicle, which was parked in front of a red brick building, near the control tower of Russell Municipal Airport. He got out of the truck and approached Marx, who was getting out of the car. “Something looks wrong here,” the agent said without preamble. “Get your rifle and provide security while I talk to Doctor Langley. I know she doesn’t want to fly it, but...”
“She understands that there is no option left,” Herb interjected. “She’s ready to begin breaking down the gear in the trailer, if you can get the choppers.”
“That’s great news,” Agent Marx said. He turned to address the men inside the car and said, “Okay, Doctor Langley is ready to fly the gear. You guys can begin preparing the equipment. I’ll make the calls and get transportation arranged.”
Erma got out of the truck when she saw the other scientists exit the car. The four of them entered the trailer to begin the laborious task of disassembling the complex computer system components and preparing them for flight.
Herb got his rifle and stood guard while Agent Marx made his calls.
He thought it odd that there was no one in evidence at the airport. It appeared to be deserted.
A barely perceptible sound reached Herb’s ears and he stood still listening. When that didn’t help him pinpoint the source, he turned his head slowly to look at the building. He saw movement beside one of the windows to the right of the front door, but thought it was just one of the airport staff going about their work.
“Damnit, that’s too long!” Herb heard Agent Marx say in the background. “Fine! Okay, we’ll be here. Try to get them to hurry. We’re not two miles from a major zombie outbreak,” he said, and then he ended the call.
“They’re telling me it will be two to four hours,” he said in disgust.
“Things could get hairy here by then,” Herb observed. “The trailer is too weak a structure to withstand an assault. The building here has too many windows, and it’s only a one story structure, so the roof is out. I wouldn’t want to bet our lives on our ability to keep them from climbing up onto that flat roof with us. They’d see us. That much is certain, and once they do, they won’t leave.”
“What about the little air traffic control tower to the right of this building?” asked Agent Marx. “I know we’d be in plain sight of the zombies, but they could only approach one at a time up those stairs.”
“I’m afraid they would climb the tower. It wouldn’t be that difficult. I could do it easily,” Herb pointed out. “Besides, once we were surrounded, we wouldn’t be able to get down to the ground to board the choppers, and I’m afraid those power lines near it would prevent the helicopters from being able to pick us up with ropes.”
Agent Marx frowned. “We can’t stay out here in the open.”
“I know. We need a strong place of concealment to wait for the choppers. That or we could try moving the trailer out to the runway where the pilots would see it. We could shelter inside it. As long as we stay inside and remain quiet, the zombies, even if some pass this way, might not know we are there,” Herb said.
