“War.” It looks like some apocalyptic Alamo; humanity’s last stand.
“Looks like our side lost.” She’s getting us locked and loaded; she hands me a pistol and tucks one away for herself.
“If anyone from our side is left, I’m willing to bet they’re in that building.”
Katia pushes back in the seat, puts a boot up on the dash, and shoulders a rifle, balancing it across the top of her knee. “Take it slow.”
I’m barely pedaling the gas. We lurch forward at a snail’s pace, dragging our asses around the craters and obliterated armor.
“See anything?” I ask.
“Have I pulled the trigger yet? Then I haven’t seen anything.”
“Just chill, we’re both on edge here.”
“I’m on edge. You sound scared.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Just…don’t steer us into a crater.”
The field of bodies grows thicker around the front of the complex; they’re stacked two and three high and they aren’t burned. I recognize most of them as being Rabid; the gray flesh and head wounds are the main giveaways. The complex seems relatively unscathed. I’m guessing the place is bulletproof. It’s probably blast proof too, hence why it’s still standing amid a field of tank carcasses and impact craters.
I don’t hear the gunshots, but three bullets blow through the top of the hood and subsequently kill the engine. I hit the brakes, throw it in park, and raise my pistol. Two floodlights burst into existence, bathing us in their blinding luminescence. The men appear like ghosts—one minute they’re not there and the next they are—wearing green face paint and fatigues, with big guns and bushy beards. They paint us through the windows with flashlights and red lasers.
“Drop the gun!”
“Hands in the air!”
“Drop the gun, bitch!”
Katia turns half circles in her seat like a cornered dog, snarling at anyone and everyone.
“Katia, don’t! They’ve got us outgunned and outnumbered!” I try to hold her still, but she breaks away.
“They’re not locking me away again! Fuck them! Fuck that!”
“Don’t do it, Katia!” I’ve got my pistol down by my side. Whichever one of these bastards shoots her, I shoot him.
“You’ve got to the count of three!” the man at Katia’s window barks.
“And you’ve got till two, fat man!” Katia barks back, undeterred.
Two more red lasers wink at us from the rooftop; it’s a full-blown ambush.
“Stand down, everyone!”
The men back away from the van as if they’re all being pulled by the same string. The lasers on our chests blink out of existence, one-by-one.
“Tim. Katia. You’re safe.” The voice is familiar.
“Oh my God!” Katia is the first one out. She leaves everything behind; her gun, her katanas, and any sense of trepidation. She stumbles across the pulverized body of a Rabid, screeches, raises her arms, and greets our savior with a bounding hug.
General Norton reciprocates her excitement, swinging her around in big dramatic circles as he tucks his chin against the side of her neck.
I approach the scene slowly, giving their enthusiasm a chance to cool down.
Norton sees me, lets Katia slide from his arms, and extends a hand. “Tim, glad to see you made it.”
“And you, Norton. After we saw that place…well, surprised anyone made it out of there.”
“My brother, where is he?” Katia’s voice swells with hope. She bounces up and down on the balls of her feet. I’m afraid she’s going to split her bottom lip with the way she’s chewing it.
Norton releases a heart-wrenching sigh.
“No…” Katia’s voice trails off. She turns, shuffles into my arms, and begins crying softly.
The final nail has been driven into the coffin and the mourning can begin.
Norton meets my eyes, the curse of the messenger weighing heavy on his expression. “Tim, let’s get inside. We need to talk. My guys will grab your stuff.”
***
I follow Norton through the lobby, with Katia under one arm. She’s red-faced and sniffling. Two of Norton’s men follow close behind.
The interior space appears to have seen as much action as the exterior; pockmarked walls, bullet casings, and dried blood make up the décor.
“Was this y’all?” I ask.
Norton shakes his head. “This little ballet of death made its stage debut long before me and my boys showed up.”
“Where are the beds? The shelter? The food?”
“You heard the radio broadcasts?”
I nod.
“It’s out there.” He points back towards the parking lot. “They had a good thing going till the place got attacked by Rabid.”
“Everyone’s dead?”
He shakes his head. “Not everyone. There are other bunkers and camps still standing. The main one is out by the National Mall; a lot of folks were moved there.”
There’s a single door at the back of the lobby, flanked by two more men in green face paint. We pass through it and begin winding down a narrow flight of stairs.
“What is this place?” I’m asking all the questions. Katia is still too distraught to speak.
“Officially? It was a place where overworked government drones pushed papers. Unofficially? It was a fallout bunker for our Commander in Chief.”
“The President is here?”
“No. He didn’t make it. Not many of them did.”
I’m assuming by them, he means our esteemed government officials. Before I can work up any sympathy, I remind myself that they’re most likely the sonsofbitches behind all this.
“How’d you find this place?”
“Those assholes that attacked us back in Dallas. We got it out of one of them.”
“We saw the aftermath of the attack, didn’t think anyone could have made it out of there in one piece.”
“Many of us didn’t make it out.” He looks back at Katia with a heavy sigh. “It’s really good to see you two. You look like you’ve been through it.” I assume he’s referring to our faces; me with the cuts and Katia with the swollen lip and black eyes.
“It hasn’t been an easy ride.”
At the bottom of the stairs, we’re met by a solid steel door, guarded by two more of Norton’s warriors. It looks like a giant bank vault. Instead of a wheel, there’s a keypad and card scanner. Norton nods to his men and approaches the keypad. He taps in a quick sequence of numbers with his index finger and removes a white, plastic card from the left pocket of his jacket.
It suddenly strikes me that Norton isn’t the least bit surprised to see us. As far as he’s concerned, we should be in Mexico on some beach with our toes buried in the sand. “You haven’t asked what happened…why we’re here.”
He scans the card. A green light flashes on the right side of the keypad. “I know what happened. You were attacked on the way to Mexico. About two days outside of Dallas, right?”
“How do you…everyone died…how do you know that?”
“Not everyone.”
The door gives off the hiss of an airlock as it crawls backwards. Katia removes her head from my chest and is now standing upright beside me, curiosity momentarily besting grief. Blinding, white lights greet us on the other side. I feel like we’re crossing over into eternity. I pull Katia along with me. The cement floor gives way to metal grating. Handrails box us in. A shiver attacks my spine; could be the temperature drop, could be the nerves. We clear the entrance and my vision returns in spots and flashes. The room reminds me of some comic book command center. There are beds on one side and an extensive rack of weapons on the other. There are people hustling around in white coats and suit jackets, manning computer consoles with scrolling green text.
At the center of it all, standing in front of me, at the bottom of a small set of steps, is Momma.
She’s hunched over, crying so hard she can barely stand.
K
atia gasps.
There’s no way.
My knees buckle and Katia catches me. “Steady. I’ve got you.”
I slide towards Momma, gripping a handrail to stay upright. “Momma! Momma!” I’m blubbering. My voice is unflatteringly squeaky; filling up the room like the world’s largest balloon has sprung a pinhole sized leak.
We catch each other at the top of the stairs and fall to the ground together.
“My baby!” Her tears drench the top of my head as we rock back and forth, a human seesaw.
She’s warm.
Familiar.
Her smell.
Her touch.
That soft area beneath her chin, just above her collarbone, where I buried my face on so many dark days.
I feel impossibly small in her arms, despite being twice her size.
Joy suddenly gives way to rage.
I turn on Katia from where I sit. “You said you saw her go down!”
“I—”
“You said you saw her go down! You said she was dead!” I lunge at Katia.
Momma’s arms act as a leash. “Timmy! It’s not her fault!”
“You lying bitch! You coward!”
Norton appears between us, hands on his hips. He backs me down.
Katia retreats towards the door, shaking her head. “I saw her fall. I saw the Rabid,” she mutters before turning and running for the stairs.
“You really think that was necessary, kid?” Norton is looking down at me, brow furrowed.
“My mom could have died out there because of Katia’s bullshit! If she didn’t see her fall, then she shouldn’t have said it! She knew I wouldn’t leave if I still thought my mom was alive! She played me!”
My mom turns me around by my shoulders. She removes my hat and sets it aside. “You have such pretty hair. You should show it more often.”
“I…like my hat.” There’s still a low boil rolling inside of me.
“Honey,” she holds my face in her hands, “listen to me for a second. Katia wasn’t putting you on. I went down. I was as good as dead. A kind gentleman saved me. He distracted the ones that were attacking me and gave me enough time to crawl under one of the trucks. When I got a break, I jumped in the driver’s seat and drove back the way we came. That girl had no reason to think I was alive. You blowing up on her just now…that was uncalled for.”
“It’s the truth, kid,” Norton’s voice booms above my head. “Your momma pulled up looking like she’d been through it, telling me the same exact story she just told you.”
All I can see now is Katia’s wounded retreat. I feel like a dog that just got caught shitting on the floor. I let Momma’s hands support my head. “I’m an asshole.”
“We all make mistakes,” she says.
“I need to go apologize.” I stand, bringing Momma with me.
Momma clings to my elbow as I turn towards the door. “Bethany…did she…”
I can tell by the tone in her voice that she already knows. She just needs to hear someone say it out loud. “She didn’t suffer.”
“That’s…that’s something,” her voice shakes, but holds under the additional load. “Thank you for being there for her when I couldn’t. I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. Katia was with me.”
***
I find her in the lobby by the floor to ceiling windows, staring out over the battlefield. She seems to shrink up at the sound of my footsteps approaching.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out, a step away from her.
“That’s it? That’s the best you got?”
“I’m an asshole.”
“A big one.”
“No argument from me.”
“I can’t believe you think that I’d ever lie about something like that!”
“Katia, I already said I’m—”
She turns and explodes like a stick of dynamite. “No! You listen to me! At least your mom’s alive! My brother…my…brother…is…” Her shove is weak and fruitless. She collapses against me.
“You did everything you could. He saved you by sending you away.”
“I didn’t want to be saved. I wanted to stand beside him and fight. If I’d been there—”
“Stop it. It’ll eat you up. Trust me. I was there, fighting beside Bethany. Wasn’t a damn thing I could do. She still fell. Sometimes, all we can do is honor them by accepting what is and moving forward.”
Katia steps back, wiping her eyes with her knuckles. “I’m really glad your mom is okay.”
“It’s crazy. I’d buried her right alongside Bethany. I’m still questioning what I just saw.”
She takes my arm. “Guess we better get back down there and make it real.”
29
“Tim, Katia, get over here for a second.” Norton is standing in front of a wall of computer monitors with a bunch of the guys and gals in white coats.
Katia and I have been sitting on one of the beds listening to Momma relay her harrowing tale of survival.
“So Norton, when do the bombs start falling?” I stand behind the group, arms crossed.
“If we’re lucky, never.”
“Change of heart?”
“Change of resources.”
“What do you mean?” Katia has reclaimed her katanas and they are now securely attached to her hips.
“This big-brained bastard said they’ve got a way to shut them down.” Norton points at a guy with frightfully thinning hair and a hook-shaped nose.
“All of them?” I ask.
“Every last one.” Norton slaps the man hard on the back.
“Hopefully.” The man sounds annoyed with Norton. He seems to be doing his best to ignore him as he hunches over his console, typing in symbols and numbers faster than I can register them.
“But Bytes said it was impossible. That they’d lost control.” I remember the conversation like it was yesterday: Ruiz and Bytes pushing for mutually assured destruction and me insisting that there had to be a better way.
Guess I was right.
“Your friends hadn’t met me,” the man at the console says dismissively. “You and your people didn’t know what you had. The USB is the encryption key. The last ingredient we need in order to bake this pie.”
“If your people had just asked politely, perhaps it’d have gotten here sooner and with a hell of a lot less blood being spilled.”
“My employers aren’t…weren’t…really in the business of asking politely.”
“That’s the government for ya; always making shit more complicated than it has to be. Just glad we’ve got ol’ Dave on our side.” Norton clamps down hard on Dave’s shoulder.
“Can you please stop doing that?” Dave turns out of Norton’s grip. “And I’m not on anyone’s side.”
“He’s a little touchy.” Norton turns to face us.
“So this is it?” I ask.
“What?”
“Is this the final copy of Project Lockjaw? After this, it’s done, gone for good?”
Norton nods. “Damn right, Dave here has assured me of it.”
“And you trust him?”
Dave stops typing and twists around in his seat, looking at me like I just called his mother a fat whore. “I lost a kid and a wife to this thing. No one in this room wants to erase this program from the planet more than me.”
For a brief moment, I consider comparing our misfortune, but I swallow it and bow my head. “Point taken and condolences for your loss.”
He silently turns back to his station.
“So these guys were here when you showed up? Just waiting to take the world back?” Katia paces up and down the row of monitors, leaning over shoulders and shoving her way through the cramped groups of techno-geeks.
“More or less.” Norton rests his hand on the pistol holstered around his thigh. “We killed most of them back in Dallas. The others got picked off during their battle with the Rabid.”
“That scorched earth stuff we drove through o
utside?” Katia asks.
“Yep.”
“Looks like they gave as good as they got.”
Norton nods. “That they did. Though victory doesn’t really mean much if you’re not around to enjoy it. There were a few armed stragglers in here, but they didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“So it’s that simple? Just plug in the encryption key, hit a few buttons, and say goodnight?”
Norton’s expression says it all.
“Great, there’s always gotta be a hitch in the giddy-up. What is it?”
“Dave, fill them in.”
Dave spins around again, hands folded like he’s praying. “Have you ever formatted a hard drive?”
“Uh,” I look to Katia and she just shrugs and shakes her head, “no, I don’t think so.”
“What? Were you like the one teenager in America without a computer?” He holds his hands up to silence me. “Don’t answer that.” He drums his fingers together, looking like an evil villain hatching his next scheme. “Alright, think of it like a giant dry-erase board. I assume you know what that is.”
“It’s an ice cream flavor. No. Wait. It’s a Hank Williams song! Am I close?”
“You always an asshole?”
Norton slices the small gap between us with the blade of his right hand. “Dave, just carry on with it, we don’t have all day.”
Dave leans back and crosses his arms. “Say you’ve got the biggest dry-erase board in the world. Then some little shit comes along and draws the biggest cock in the world. Well, your grandma is coming over for dinner next week and you’ve only got one eraser, so you better get to work if you don’t want her to see it. That’s our situation. We’ve got the world’s biggest hard drive and on it is Project Lockjaw. Formatting the drive, well, that’s us trying to erase the cock before grandma shows.”
“Where does the problem come in?” Katia scoots up next to me and puts an arm around my waist.
“When we use the encryption key and boot up the program it sends out a signal.”
“Uh, what kind of signal?” Katia asks.
“Think of it like a GPS.” Norton seems anxious to hurry the conversation along. “When we start the process of shutting down the Rabid, every single one of them, coast-to-coast, are gonna rush our front door.”
The Rabid: Fall Page 17
