Five Roads To Texas: A Phalanx Press Collaboration

by Lundy, W. J.

  “Golf Two, Golf One,” Sergeant Moore’s voice crackled over the handheld radio. Ram grabbed up the mic and clicked it on.

  “Go ahead, Golf One.”

  “Yeah. Hey, Ram, we just got word on the radio from the Eureka PD that there’s some kind of disturbance down Fourth Street. Protestors or some shit, so we’re gonna have to take a detour.”

  “That’s just swell,” Ram said into the mic. “Maybe they should drop some job applications on the crowd. That’ll scare them off.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t worry, old man. We’ll get you to St. Joe’s before you have to take a pee break. Just make sure Moreno doesn’t lose us.” The radio clicked off.

  “Moore.” Ram clipped the mic onto the side of the handheld. “I remember when he would hide in the bathroom every time an alarm went off. What a dick.”

  “I’m just glad I’m riding with you and not him. Poor Avila.”

  “Avila is probably stewing, riding with him,” Ram replied with a grin as he watched US-101 turn into Fourth Street. He could see the parking lot of the local Target to his right. It was crammed full of cars, and people were in a frenzy, running to and from the store, arms and carts loaded with groceries and other stuff. “That’s kinda odd,” he muttered.

  “I noticed that too,” Jesse nodded toward the Target. “No traffic headed into town either.”

  “Maybe whatever protest they have going on scared folks off?” Ram suggested with a shrug, the Kevlar vest under his jumpsuit moving up and down. The old prison guard hated wearing the damn things.

  “Maybe,” Jesse said halfheartedly. As she watched ahead of them, she noticed smoke billowing up from several blocks away. “You see that, Ram?”

  “Damn.” Ram leaned forward. He could see the thick black smoke rising from the where the courthouse and police station should be.

  “Golf Two, Golf One!” The radio crackled with Moore’s panicked voice. It made the already spooked Ram jump.

  “Go ahead,” Ram said into the mic.

  “We just got a call from the watch. There’s a full-blown riot on A Yard—Code Three.” Ram gave Jesse a quick look and shook his head. Code Three was bad. “They want us to return. Now!”

  “Damn, anybody hurt?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to take the next two-way street.”

  “Ten-four,” Ram said, hanging the mic back up.

  “Yard’s been normal all week,” Jesse said, watching the street ahead of them.

  “That doesn’t mean anything, Jesse.” Ram glanced over his shoulder at the Target store as it grew smaller in the distance. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Ram!”

  The officer quickly turned back to see a big Ford F-150 speeding the wrong way down Fourth Street. People clung to the truck, insanely trying to get inside the vehicle’s cab. The F-150 drove wildly and veered toward the lead transport vehicle. Ram saw Moore try to swerve out of the truck’s path, but he wasn’t fast enough. The Ford smashed head-on with the Crown Victoria. The impact flung the people clinging to the outside of the truck to the road; bodies flew in all directions. Some were splattered against the local storefronts, while others were smashed into the asphalt of Fourth Street. The Crown Victoria erupted into a ball of flame as the Ford pushed it into the side of an insurance building.

  “Holee shit!” Ram gripped the dashboard tightly with his right hand. He glanced over at Jesse. She’d brought their Crown Vic to a screeching halt and was just staring at the burning vehicles. All of the color had drained from her face.

  “Oh my…”

  “It’s okay, kid!” Ram grabbed her gently on the shoulder. “Call it in. I’m going see if I can help!” He reached down and grabbed the mini extinguisher, knowing that they were probably all dead, anyway. He jumped out of the car and sprinted toward the wreckage. As he ran past the dozen or so bodies spread out on the roadway, he knew he should stop to check them, but the men trapped in the burning vehicles needed help now.

  “Fuck me.” Ram stopped outside the burning building. The truck and the Crown Victoria were wedged deeply inside and flames covered both vehicles. Feeling the heat from the fires, Ram could clearly see that there’d be no survivors. Dropping the extinguisher to his side, he ran his left hand across his face. Rick Avila had been a good guy. Ram had known the older guard since the academy. His family would be devastated. Moore, on the other hand, had been a coward and a prick his whole career, but he sure didn’t deserve to be burned alive.

  Ram took a deep breath, still not sure what the hell had just happened or how to deal with it. He’d been one of those guys who had slept through transportation classes, figuring someone else would be there to help. Well, hopefully Jesse was that someone who would help with all the protocols he didn’t know. “Fuck.”

  Ram started to turn back to the Crown Victoria when he heard a deep moaning sound. Turning to his right, he saw one of the people who’d been thrown from the Ford struggle to his feet. The man was dressed in the torn remains of a Eureka Police Department uniform. His duty belt hung loosely from his waist, the handheld radio dangling from its holster. As the officer staggered toward him, Ram could see he was bleeding from his eyes and ears. The man let out a feral groan and jumped at him, tearing at his cheek. Ram instinctively brought the fire extinguisher up and slammed the crazed officer in the side of the head with it, knocking him to the ground. Momentarily dazed, the officer struggled to his feet once more.

  “Hey buddy…”

  The policeman leapt at Ram again. This time, Ram used all his strength to slam the officer in the head with the fire extinguisher. The man collapsed heavily onto the street, unmoving. Ram, worn out from the brief fight, tossed the extinguisher to the ground and slumped back, overwhelmed. He really needed to start working out again.

  “Ram!” Jesse shouted from outside the driver’s side of the Crown Vic. Her Glock was drawn and held close into her chest. “We need to go, now!”

  Ram looked back to where his partner was, noticing that the civilians who had been thrown from the Ford and should have been dead, were now starting to get to their feet. All of them seemed focused on him.

  “Ah, fuck!”

  9

  Eureka, California

  March 27th

  “What the fuck was that?” Ram gripped the dashboard of the Crown Vic tightly with his left hand while he held the .38 in his trembling right. “Jesse, what the fuck just happened?”

  The other guard made no attempt at a reply as she gunned the big V8 engine and stared straight ahead at the highway in front of them. Looking behind them, Ram saw that the crowd of mad men and women had finally ended their insane foot pursuit of the fleeing car. The older guard turned back around in his seat and ran a hand across his bleeding right cheek. The crazed policeman had made a pretty deep tear in Ram’s face.

  “Jesse…” Ram noticed that she was staring intently straight ahead, not focused on the freeway in front of them. She’d fallen into some kind of shock.

  “Jesse!” Ram grabbed her shoulder and gave her a hard shake. The younger guard suddenly snapped out of her stupor and relaxed the pressure on the gas pedal.

  “Sorry, Ram.” Jesse exhaled quickly and eased up on her steering wheel death-grip. “I lost it for a moment. Won’t happen again.” The speedometer quickly dropped down to fifty-five.

  “No worries, Jesse.” Ram tried to give her a reassuring smile as he reached for the car’s radio mic. “I lost it for a second back there too. What was that?”

  “Madness. Pure Madness.” Jesse’s voice was calm and almost monotone.

  “I won’t argue with you there.”

  “I was a corpsman in the Navy,” Jesse stated. “I saw something similar to this in southern Africa. Only it wasn’t Ebola or any known virus.”

  Ram held the mic absently in his hands as he listened to Jesse ramble on. She’d told him about her time in the Navy on a few prior occasions, but he’d never heard her talk like this. Her demeanor sent a cold chil
l down his spine. Jesse had always spoke about the humanitarian efforts they did while she was a corpsman. Never once did she mention this spooky shit.

  “Those people were just angry.” Ram tried to keep his voice from cracking. “What do you mean ‘virus’?” he asked, his voice finally betraying him.

  “Didn’t you see their eyes?” she said, not taking hers off the road. “They were bleeding from them.”

  Ram clearly remembered the face of the police officer who had attacked him. It was something he’d never forget. The officer’s eyes were definitely bleeding. Ram still couldn’t, or wouldn’t, put it together. “What kinda virus was it?”

  “They never figured it out. The powers that be firebombed the whole village. Cleansed it.” Jesse gave him a weird smirk. “That was some serious classified information I just shared.” She gave Ram a dead-eyed stare he’d never seen from her before. The younger guard tried to keep her eyes from focusing on the fresh wound on her partner’s face. That was bad news for him. “I swear that was the same shit I witnessed in Africa.”

  “You’re scaring the fuck out of me, Jesse.”

  “That’s two of us.” She nodded at the forgotten mic in his hand. “You going to call this in?”

  Ram nodded as he quickly brought the mic to his lips and clicked the talk button. He called in the accident to the prison and got no response. After his third attempt, he dropped the mic into his lap.

  “They’re not answering,” he said, pulling his cell phone out of his jumpsuit pocket. “Let me try the watch office.” Jesse continued to steer the Crown Vic north on the unusually vacant highway as Ram found the number in his contacts. The younger officer knew exactly what had affected those people in Eureka. She didn’t know its name, but she knew it was deadly and it was here.

  “Cell’s not connecting. I just get that damned recording saying they are unavailable.” He punched in his home number and got the same recording. Frustrated, he dropped the phone into his lap. “Cell towers must be down.”

  Jesse tossed him a worried look, and he noticed that they’d picked up speed. Now, concerned for his family, he paid closer attention to the road. A couple of cars sped by in the opposite lanes, heading toward Eureka. Other than that, there were no other vehicles on the road. While he’d been busy calling for help, Jesse sped by Humboldt State University and several off-ramps with access to services. Both of them had been too wrapped in their own thoughts and fears to notice the clouds of black smoke wafting up from the university—or the line of Blackhawk helicopters in the distance.

  “Take the first McKinleyville exit. There’s a sheriff’s station there. If not, there’s the Highway Patrol offices out by the airport. Maybe we can get some help from one of them.”

  “Okay.” Jesse nodded, glancing at the rapidly approaching exit sign. “About a mile up.”

  Ram just nodded in response. His thoughts had gone from his survival to the welfare of his wife and daughter. The bloody eyes of the crazed policeman kept replaying in his mind as did Jesse’s story about the deadly virus. Wouldn’t they have heard about that outbreak in Africa? He was sure neither thing had anything to do with the other. But, damned if…

  “Here’s the first McKinleyville exit!” Jesse’s voice cracked as she started to turn the cruiser off the highway. The exit was blocked by two desert-camouflaged Stryker vehicles, causing Jesse to bring the speeding Crown Vic to a sliding halt.

  “ATTENTION IN THE VEHICLE, THIS IS A QUARANTINE AREA!” a voice boomed through a loudspeaker. “YOU MUST TURN AROUND AND EXIT THE AREA IMMEDIATELY BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN THE USE OF DEADLY FORCE. I REPEAT…”

  “Jesse?” Ram could see the big weapons on the armored vehicles pointed directly at them. He felt the sudden urge to empty his bladder, but held it in. Ram didn’t feel like humiliating himself any more than he already had.

  “They mean business, Ram. We need to turn back to the highway.”

  “Jesse…” The senior officer thought maybe they should inform the soldiers of their incident in Eureka.

  “Don’t fuck around on this, Ram!” the other officer said in a no-nonsense tone. “They’ll shoot us, no shitting!” She quickly spun the wheel around and turned the cruiser back toward the highway. Ram glanced over his shoulder as they swiftly pulled out of the off-ramp. He could see several soldiers running about, setting up more barricades, automatic weapons slung across their chest.

  Yeah, he thought to himself as he wiped the cold sweat from his face. Maybe it would’ve been a bad idea to stop and try to chat. Ram slumped heavily down in his seat. Everything seemed to be falling apart. He needed to get to his family.

  “Jesse, what the hell?”

  “I think it’s best we head back to Crescent City,” she said, watching the road. “All the exits into McKinleyville have to be secured. Soldiers are probably all over the place. Those guys didn’t look like National Guard either. If we’d hung around that exit much longer, they would have opened fire.”

  “Crap!” He picked up his cell and tried his wife’s number. Nothing.

  Ram suddenly felt like the dynamic between the two officers had changed. Jesse was now the one with most of the experience with whatever was going on. “You think they killed the cell towers too?” Jesse gave him a quick nod. “Fuck me. Okay, let’s get our asses back home. This shit can’t be all over, can it?”

  Jesse’s silence was all the answer he needed. Whatever this shit storm was that they were in, they were all in extreme danger.

  10

  Near Klamath, California

  March 27th

  “Can you tell it’s there?” Ram turned his left cheek so Jesse could see the big bandage he covered the bleeding scratch with.

  “Tell what’s there?” Jesse gave him a quick look as she continued to steer the big Crown Vic through the curvy road toward Crescent City.

  “Nice.” Ram shut the first aid kit and quickly shoved it down under the seat. “I’m lucky that dipfuck didn’t get my eye.”

  “Lucky,” Jesse replied in that creepy monotone voice she’d used earlier. Ram had a gut feeling that she knew more than she’d shared about what was going on.

  “I’m okay, right?”

  “Yeah, Ram.” Jesse smiled, and she almost sounded oddly normal when she said that. “It’s just a flesh wound,” she added in a mock English accent.

  “Just a flesh wound?” Ram frowned. “Damn Monty Python. Fucker stings like a bitch for a flesh wound.”

  “Quit being a BITCH, Ram. I’ve had worse cuts shaving my legs.” Jesse gave the older guard a quick sideways glance. She could see the red of infection outside the edges of the bandage. Not a good sign for her partner. Ram hadn’t shown any other obvious outward indicators of the viral outbreak she’d encountered in Africa all those years ago. Maybe that was a good thing. Still, the younger guard had slyly popped the snap off her holster so she’d be able to quickly draw her handgun if need be.

  “You’re not shaving your legs with crazed lunatics’ fingernails, Jesse.” He winced in pain. Ram could feel the infection attacking his body from the inside. He hoped against hope that it was just an infection from the cop’s dirty hands and not some virus that would turn him into a rage-filled freak like the others. He glanced up at the passing road signs and realized they weren’t far from the bridge that crossed the Klamath River and would lead them past the small town of the same name, and then eventually into Crescent City. Ram tried his cell phone again with no luck. The older guard cursed as he shoved the phone into his jumpsuit pocket.

  “Ram?”

  “Still no service.” He absently rubbed at his bandaged wound, worried that the worst had happened to his family.

  “Shit!” Jesse cursed as the Crown Vic rounded the last curve before the bridge. Slamming on the cruiser’s brakes, the big vehicle slid sideways across both lanes and came to an abrupt stop several dozen feet before the entrance to the bridge.

  “Holee crap!�
� Ram sat up in his seat and pulled the .38 from his holster.

  “This can’t be good,” Jesse said, glancing over at her partner.

  “No shit,” Ram grumbled under his breath. He opened the passenger’s door quickly and climbed out, the pistol firmly in his right hand and close into his chest like they’d recently started teaching at the range. “Jesse?”

  “Regular Army,” she said, pulling the Mini 14 from its rack between the seats and joining Ram outside the cruiser.

  A row of concrete barriers blocked the entrance to the bridge. On top of the barricade was haphazardly strung concertina wire. Back several more feet were two desert-camouflage Humvees parked end-to-end. Both guards noticed the sky above was filled with carrion birds circling the area.

  Jesse gave Ram a hand signal to follow her closer to the barrier. The older guard guessed that’s what she meant and fell in behind her, pistol at the ready. As they moved in, both of them could see the dozens of bodies scattered around the bridge and Humvees. Ram ran his left hand across his face. He’d seen a lot of blood and guts spilled before, but nothing like this. Jesse squeezed his shoulder, causing him to jump a little.

  “It’s okay,” she said in a low tone while she scanned the area over the Mini 14’s iron sights. Seeing no movement, she dropped the weapon to a combat rest position. “Looks like they were overrun.”

  “Fuck!” Ram cursed a little too loudly and was answered by the squawks of the hungry crows. “Whatever happened in Eureka is here.”

  “We need to get across the bridge.” Jesse gave the scene of carnage another quick scan then hurried over to the back of their Crown Victoria to open the trunk. Ram walked backward slowly to the rear of the cruiser, keeping his eyes on the bridge.