“We already tried it,” Calvin answered. “I’m not sure if it’s broken or no one is left to answer.”
Paul went close enough to smell the sweat floating from Maria’s dark skin. “Take us to it.”
“Hey man, we will totally take you. But can we at least have our guns back?” Calvin swallowed dryly, taking an uneasy look around the ghost town with his hands up. “Those fuckers are still out here.”
“Quit talking.” Paul turned to Maria and swept a hand out. “After you.”
▼
The fluorescent lights flickered to life, lighting up the wood paneled walls and dusty equipment. The smell of mothballs and wet permeated the air and Paul guessed that in a world of internet, cellphones and satellites, this room didn’t see much action anymore. The equipment was black and dark brown and looked like something out of a Hogan’s Heroes episode, deflating his chest. Walking to the back of the room, he passed some old reel-to-reels and pushed a hand through a sheet of cobwebs, stopping at the table Maria was staring down at.
“This is the emergency radio,” she said, brushing something from her face. “We have tried every channel almost every day.”
“Almost?” Paul bent for a closer look, inspecting the black knobs and dials. He’d run a lot of boards before but nothing like this. “When was the last time you tried it?”
“Day before yesterday.” Maria flipped a switch, igniting some dim yellow lights. “A few years ago, the military began bringing back high-frequency communications rather than depending solely upon satellite.”
“Why’s that?” Wendy asked, flicking a spider from her arm.
“Because during emergencies, high cellphone use can overload the satellite system.”
“Is that why the cellphones and internet are down?”
“Probably initially, but no one is manning the satellites now and most have gone dormant. Eventually, things crash and burn.”
Paul’s eyebrows went up. “Most have gone dormant? What about the others?”
She shrugged. “I’m a new reserve. When the outbreak started, I was in my second week of training.”
“Oh, that’s nice.” He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a longwinded breath, eager to take this horse and buggy out for a spin. “If you’re a reserve, how do you know the satellites have gone dormant?”
Maria arched an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t you ever see The Day After Tomorrow?”
“Jesus Christ, not everything is a movie!” Spinning on the balls of his feet, he turned to Calvin. “What about you?”
Calvin looked behind him, unsure if Paul was talking to him or not. “Me? Yeah, I saw it. Not a bad little movie.”
“Not the movie! What did you do for work before this?”
“Oh, I work at Google,” he said with a sheepish smile, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his pointy nose. “Well, used to work at Google.”
“Downtown?”
He nodded.
“Any medical training?”
The husband and wife turned blank expressions on each other before shaking their heads.
Paul looked back to the radio. It was tall and chunky, the wires as dry as the skin on those things outside. He sat down in a chair with cracked vinyl padding and wheeled it closer to a microphone mounted to a short stand on the table. Wavy Gravy floated through his tired mind and he could still hear the screams and grunts that came from the boat’s radio that night. This had to be different. If it wasn’t… Pushing the morbid thought from his mind, Paul sucked a deep breath through his teeth and held onto it. “So where do we start?”
Chapter Four
Paul leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms out, cracking his back and releasing an eye watering yawn. It was full dark outside and his eyelids were heavy as hell. They’d been at this for over an hour now with no success. “Jesus!” he said, throwing an empty water bottle across the room. “So that’s it? Everyone out there is dead? There’s no one left?”
Calvin shrugged his bony shoulders. “Not everyone has access to a radio.”
“No, but someone higher up should. Someone in the military or FEMA or some hardcore prepper. Fucking somebody!”
“Yeah, you’d think some of them were locked in bunkers with old radios like these.” Calvin scratched his head, studying the ancient artifact. “But I’m telling you, man, we haven’t heard a peep.”
“Fucking shit.” Paul massaged his face with both hands and yanked them away. “So this it? This is as good as it gets? Locked in some military base with stragglers crawling all over the place? Well, lucky fucking us!”
Calvin shared a frown with the others. “Stragglers?” He chuckled a little. “I think bees sounds way cooler.”
Paul jumped up, sliding his chair back and balling Calvin’s coat into his fists. He slammed him up against a wall, rattling a framed picture of the president. “Is this a fucking joke to you?”
The smile slid down his face and landed around his hipster boots. “No, I just…”
“Leave him alone,” Maria shouted, pushing past Wendy, who grabbed her by the arms and held her back.
Paul spun away from Calvin and caught a worried look from Stephanie that made him cringe. Shame washed over him like a December rain, making him shrink into his leather jacket. Inhaling a calming breath, he wiped a cobweb from his face and avoided Maria’s pointed glare. Sometimes he barely knew who he was anymore. Like when he shot Marvin in the head back at the Jacobsen house. Like when he buried his wife in a state she’d never been to before and then just left her to rot under a weeping willow. He was a glorified DJ who liked to mow the yard and grill on the weekends.
Wasn’t he?
Maria shook Wendy off and stepped in Paul’s face. “Oh, let me guess,” she said, planting her hands on her curvy hips. “You’re the only one who lost somebody out there. You’re the only special little snowflake reeling in pain!”
Meeting her piercing gaze, his blood boiled. She had no fucking idea.
“Well, we lost people too, Paul!” Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes and ran over the apples on her cheeks, leaving tracks that glistened beneath the buzzing lights. “I lost everyone I know! Everyone!”
Sighing, Paul nodded weakly. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, dropping onto a couch against the wall and stirring up a cloud of dust.
Stephanie waved a hand in front of her and scooted over to give him more room. “Don’t worry, we’ll find someone,” she whispered, looking to Calvin and Maria. “Like we found them.”
Rebecca crossed the room and sat on the other side of Paul, wrapping her coat tighter around her and flushing his side with heat.
“Look, I’m sorry but,” Maria said, pausing to lower her eyes to the high-top silver Converse on her feet, “but there’s no one left. No one who can help us anyway.”
Calvin pulled her against his side and thumbed behind him. “Maybe we should get to the cafeteria and call it night. The doors lock and there’s plenty of food.”
“And heat,” Maria added, staring at the radio through distant eyes as if she’d missed a switch somewhere along the line that was preventing them from making contact. Something so obvious it was right under the tip of her nose.
“How far?”
“Few buildings over. It’s not far.”
Paul’s eyes swept over the dim lights on the ham radio, a low buzzing coming through the speakers on the channel they last tried. He willed a voice to emerge from the dull drone. Somebody who could get them out of this mess alive. Somebody with a way to reverse things. Someone who could bring her back. Sinking into the couch, he shut his eyes and winced with the stabbing pain puncturing his heart. He didn’t grab a single picture from his house and now they were gone forever. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Just like Sophia. Sensing his distress, Rebecca set a soft hand on his leg so he got up and started pacing the long narrow room. White ghosts of breath slipped from his lips. His stomach rumbled. He stopped pacing, realizing everyone was staring at him again
like he had all the fucking answers. Like he knew what to do next when it was so goddamn obvious he wanted to scream it from the motherfucking rooftops. This was next. This! Right here behind this security fence. Forever. Tomorrow they would have to start clearing buildings and kicking bushes and once this entire base was clear of corpses, this would become their new home.
This was next.
The end.
Do not pass go.
Do not collect $200.
“How’s the armory look?” he asked, afraid to even know the answer.
“It’s pretty cleaned out,” Maria replied, confirming his sneaking suspicions. “There’s some stuff left but most of the people who checked out weapons never came back. And the few that stayed behind to man the computers and communication networks got the virus and turned.”
His forehead crumpled. “How’d they get the virus?”
She toyed with the small diamond on her left ring finger. “Some of them just got sick out of the blue, and some came back with bites. At that point, we had no clue what would happen next or we never would’ve let them back inside the base.”
Calvin grunted. “I got attacked on the fucking toilet.” He blew oily bangs from his eyes. “Luckily, I always carry. Even in the old world.”
“I hear that,” Billy said. “Some dangerous-ass people out there.”
“Takes one to know one,” Curtis murmured.
Paul stared at Calvin, gaze contracting. “But you didn’t turn. Why not?”
He shrugged. “Blind luck.”
Pressing his lips together, Paul eyed them over to the static softly hissing from the radio. “Did you get flu shots this past season?”
They shook their heads, eyebrows drawing together.
“Wait, you think flu shots did this?” Calvin tried to stop a laugh that might trigger Paul to slam him up against the wall again but couldn’t do it. “That’d be pretty messed up if that were true. Can you imagine? Going to the doctor to die.”
Wendy tilted her head to one side. “How’d you get here if you’re not in the guard?”
Calvin exhaled. “Maria was pulling a weekend shift and I came here as soon as it started.” He jerked a sharp chin over his shoulder. “We don’t live too far away and it didn’t take a rocket surgeon to realize things were going to get bad. Real bad.”
“Rocket scientist.”
Calvin frowned at Curtis. “What’d I say?”
“Okay, let’s get to the cafeteria and we’ll try the radio again tomorrow. I’m beat.” Paul let another long yawn slip out and picked up the M4 which now weighed a hundred pounds in his hands. His legs dragged and his shoulders slumped. He felt like one of those things out there, dead on his feet. This was his Achilles heel. He needed sleep and the corpses didn’t.
Rounding up their gear, they headed for the door, stopping only for the faint voice crackling through the speakers. Paul’s heart jumped. The hair went up on his arms. Everyone slowly turned to the radio at the back of the room, which seemed to stretch like a tunnel. The lights flickered and, for a fleeting moment, Paul was certain the generator would go out right when they needed it the most because isn’t that just the way shit goes sometimes?
Pushing past the others, he rushed across the room and snatched up the mic, pressing the button on the base of the stand so hard the plastic creaked beneath his thumb. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
They traded anxious glances in the painful silence that followed, pulse thumping in their necks and a mixture of hope and fear mingling in their eyes. Turning up the volume, he tried again and waited with bated breath. When no one responded he swore and nearly threw the mic against a map of Iowa tacked to the wall.
“I can hear you,” a voice whispered from the speakers. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes!” Paul’s heart boomed in his chest. His breath raced even faster, eyes ravaging the radio like maybe he could, somehow, get a glimpse of the person on the other end. “Where are you?”
“A cabin in Leadville, Colorado,” the man softly replied, bringing a puzzled look to everyone’s face. “We’re out of ammunition and those things have us surrounded, which is why I’m whispering. We need help and we need it quick.”
Paul looked at the others, all of whom had turned to stone behind him. He pressed the mic key with an audible click. “Leadville? Isn’t that near Copper Mountain?”
“It is. About a half hour down the pass on a clear day.”
“What’s your name?”
“Brian McCrae.”
“Brian, I’m Paul.” Static broke in and he wasn’t sure if Brian heard him or not.
“Good to hear your voice, Paul. I was afraid no one was left out there. Where are you?”
“We’re at a National Guard base in Des Moines, Iowa.” He released the button and could hear the disappointment creep into Brian’s voice.
“Des Moines?” He paused to turn something over in his head. “How far is that? Nine? Ten hours away?”
“Twelve to the top of the mountain if it’s clear. How many are with you?”
“My wife and six-year-old little girl, Lindsey. My younger brother too.” There was a flash of static and the name Lindsey sent a charge through Paul. “We can’t get to the snowmobiles, let alone the trucks and I don’t mind telling you, Paul, I’m starting to get a little worried. There’s at least thirty corpses tromping around in the snow up here. Probably more, hard to tell with the pines and hills.”
“Give me your exact location before we get cut off.”
Brian told him where the cabin was located and Maria scribbled it down on a notebook lying on the table. Pausing for a few seconds, Brian’s heavy breathing ebbed and flowed from the radio as he held the mic button down, as if waiting for someone to get out of earshot. “And to add insult to injury, we’re almost out of food and water as well.”
Calvin groaned and pulled his hands through his dark hair, mussing the part on the side.
Paul turned to Maria with the microphone stand gripped tightly in his fist, reading the worried look in her dark brown eyes and then bringing the mic to his lips. “Is the cabin safe?”
“It is for now.” The older sounding man chuckled softly. “We’ve got it boarded up tight and it’ll probably last longer than we do. I won’t lie, this isn’t looking good.”
“We’re going to come get you,” he replied, making Curtis throw his hands out in exasperation. “Leave your radio on and I’ll contact you at six a.m., Central Standard Time, with our exact plan. We’ll leave at dawn and be there by dinnertime. I’ve been to Copper Mountain a few times and we will get you out of there. I promise.”
“How many are in your group?”
Paul’s narrow gaze roamed the room, counting the nervous pairs of eyes staring back. “Eight,” he said, not knowing if Maria and Calvin were part of the group or not and not caring. He was going with or without them. Any of them.
Brian sighed and Paul couldn’t tell if it sounded dejected or relieved. “Well, I can’t thank you enough for doing this, Paul. It means the world to all of us and it is moments like this that separate us from them. Thank you.”
“Just sit tight and try to keep everyone calm and quiet. I know that’s easier said than done, Brian, but you and your family will get through this if you keep your heads.”
A long sigh stormed the speakers. “There’s one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“The weather man isn’t around anymore but if it snows, there’s no one to clear the pass, so if that happens…”
“It’s March and if it snows it’ll melt quickly. We will make it.”
A pregnant pause bulged the line and then Brian broke through in a faint voice. “Thank you, Paul. And may the Good Lord bless each and every one of you.”
Chapter Five
Leaning back into a hard plastic chair, Paul forced himself to take another bite of some cheese that smelled like feet. The mess hall’s generator was enough to keep the fridge running but not the walk-in coole
rs and it wouldn’t take long for everything inside to spoil, electricity or not. Watching the others trade whispers and murmurs across the long room, he sat alone at a large round table, trying not to look at the outlet in the wall next to him. Trying not to feel Billy’s cellphone in his pocket. Trying not to imagine what might be on there. There had to be a reason the police bagged it and tagged it and Paul was dying to find out what that reason was. Billy glanced at him from across the room and Paul pushed it from his mind, going over the plan again instead. Chewing slowly, he drummed his fingers against the big round table that reminded him of the car dealer showroom.
The plan was simple. Get all the guns and ammo from the armory they could squeeze into the Suburban, including the six people they also had to stuff inside. Eight if Maria and Calvin were up for the challenge, and Paul hoped they were. They needed an army and he would build it one person at a time. Unfortunately, according to Maria, the only Guard trucks left behind had open beds covered by flimsy tarps.
No heat.
No protection.
No gas mileage.
The others talked and ate at a candlelit table across the cafeteria, the candles cloaking their faces in jumping shadows, making them look sinister and alien. Letting his mind go blank, he stopped thinking for a minute because he would need to get some sleep before hitting the open road at dawn, but he couldn’t help but wonder if this was the right move. They were relatively safe here and once they cleared the base of stragglers – assuming the fence continued to hold – they could recharge their batteries for a bit before setting out halfway across the country on some suicide mission to save a snowbound family trapped inside their cabin. The six-year-old little girl named Lindsey flickered through his mind and grief was quick to follow, stabbing an invisible icepick through his heart when he thought about the last two children he tried to save. He could still see the blood shooting from Mike as a mechanic tore him apart like an old Buick. Could still hear Carla’s screams over the gunfire and death moans while an old lady ripped into Matt’s neck.
Dead Series (Book 3): A Little More Alive Page 3
