Five Roads To Texas: A Phalanx Press Collaboration

by Lundy, W. J.

  On one hand, a few days of being sick would prolong our food supply, she mused.

  She decided that the best thing to do would be to put everything on the counter and see what they had, so for ten minutes she moved cans from the pantry to the counter. Once she was done with this, she wanted to put everything in the backpacks in case they had to leave in a hurry. It was too much before, but the entirety of their food stocks would likely now fit in the two big backpacks she’d purchased—with room to spare.

  The water was a different story. Lincoln’s house was on the city’s sewer system, so his water still worked, even with the power out. They still had most of the bottled water he’d purchased on day one and boiled the water from the tap on his little tailgating grill out back before drinking it. They had plenty of water, but if they had to go on foot, Sidney wasn’t sure just how much canned food and bottled water they could carry in their backpacks. Good thing boy-o was a rower with a strong, wide back, she thought.

  “Okay,” she said to a bleary-eyed Lincoln as he came in, scratching the layer of growth on his neck. Without power, he’d been unwilling to shave with cold water. In any case, the new beard suited him. “We need to really look at our supplies and decide when we’re going to Atlanta. I don’t want to wait too long and then not have enough food to make it to the quarantine zone.”

  He surveyed her work, taking in the different stacks that were separated from one another. “These represent a week’s worth of food?”

  “Yeah,” she replied, thankful that he understood her methodology. She wasn’t in the mood to explain things to him in detail.

  Sidney was sure that if things hadn’t gone to shit, she and Lincoln would have made a great couple, but as it was, she was absolutely sick of him. Moving in with a person only a few hours after you met them and then not being able to leave their presence was not how humans had evolved. He was fiercely stubborn for no reason, couldn’t follow elaborate plans more than a few steps in detail, and worse, he’d become annoying just by sitting near her. About the only thing that wasn’t annoying about him was his dick. They’d run out of condoms after a couple of days but still had sex two or three times a day to help ease the tension and pass the time…

  “Son of a bitch!” Sidney hissed, louder than either of them had dared to speak since the trash bag incident.

  “What?” Lincoln asked in alarm, likely wondering what he’d done to annoy her this time.

  “I—” She stopped, feeling silly for her outburst. She could have been sick this morning for any number of reasons, not only that reason. “Nothing.”

  Sidney pointed at the stacks of food and said, “So you can see, we have about four weeks of food left. That frozen stuff you had pushed us about a week further along.”

  He grinned. “Good thing I suggested we eat that first, huh? With the power out, those frozen chicken nuggets would have been awful hard to gnaw on.”

  “Yeah, that was good thinking,” she admitted before returning to the matter at hand. “We think it’ll take anywhere from twelve hours to twelve days to make it to Atlanta, right?”

  “That’s what all that scribbling in your notebook says, sure.”

  “Right. And we haven’t seen any of the infected for about a week.”

  “We hadn’t really seen them for a few days before the trash bag incident,” he reminded her. “And look at how many of them came out of nowhere for that.”

  “True,” she muttered. “But we need to make it to the quarantine zone, so we’re going to have to go outside at some point.”

  He pointed at the back door. “We go outside all the time.”

  “Not what I meant, and you know it,” she sighed. It was the same argument they’d had for weeks. Lincoln was happy to stay in his home, with its fenced-in backyard and running water. Lincoln’s two main—and correct—points were that they’d lose all security and ready access to fresh water the moment they left his house. Her points were that they’d gain safety and fresh water once they made it to the quarantine zone.

  She arranged her thoughts for a moment. If there was even the remotest chance that she was pregnant, with no ability to get to a clinic to have it taken care of, Sidney didn’t want to stay in DC any longer than she had to. Maybe she’d try a new tactic with him.

  “You ever wonder why we were ordered to evacuate?”

  Lincoln shrugged. “To save as many people as possible, I guess.”

  “That’s right. I think the military is going to start clearing the area between the quarantine zones.”

  “Clearing… You think the Army is going to shoot everybody?”

  “The Army, the Air Force, a bunch of deputized rednecks with guns, whoever, Linc. My point is that before too long, somebody is gonna start a house-to-house search. I’d bet that they’re going to shoot first and not bother asking any questions. We need to leave.”

  As he worked through her words, Sidney could practically see the hamster spinning the wheel in his brain, revving up his thought processes. Finally, he said, “You really think the president would allow the Army to kill people?”

  “It’s kinda the reason we have the military. They’re trained to kill our enemies, and I doubt there’s ever been a greater threat to the US than this virus and the people who carry it.” She paused long enough to let that sink in, but not long enough to make him think it was his turn to talk. “Anyone who didn’t listen to the evacuation order is potentially a carrier of the disease. They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot them, just to be safe.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Remember the videos that came out of California?” she interrupted. “That was only in the first couple of days, back when the government was trying to keep this thing a secret. It’s out in the open now. They wouldn’t hesitate to put us down.”

  He grimaced. “You’re right. I just don’t want to think about it. We’re comfortable here, and we could wait it out, y’know?”

  “No, I don’t know. You don’t know either. This thing could take years to put down—or worse, they just decide to bomb the shit out of the places that have heavy concentrations of the infected.”

  “They wouldn’t do that,” Lincoln said.

  “Yeah, they would. We need to leave on our own terms. Not on those of the infected, and sure as hell not on the military’s.”

  “But didn’t the government tell us to go? Doesn’t that mean the military is on our side?”

  Shit, he had a point. “Dammit, Linc. You know what I mean. We need to get out of DC, but we need to be able to leave when we want to, not running blindly from a bunch of soldiers or crazies.”

  “I guess I don’t really see the difference.”

  Sidney wanted to fire back at him, to yell about his incompetence and misguided beliefs that the federal government was looking out for his best interests, anything to keep the argument about leaving the city going, but at the same time, she was just tired of it. Tired of the arguing. Tired of the feeling of being trapped. Tired of it all.

  “Look, Lincoln,” she said. “I’m not going to stay in this house any longer than I have to. I brought that car here, so it’s mine, and I’ll leave when I want.”

  “Whoa!” he replied, holding up his hands. “That’s not what I—that’s not how this was supposed to go. I just wanted to talk about it, and you brought up the soldiers slaughtering our neighbors.”

  She nodded. “I’m going to go check out the backyard and look over the fences again. Then I’m going to make a bunch of noise by throwing shit at one of the other houses to see if anything comes. I’m going to do the same thing for a couple of days, and if nothing happens on any of those times, I’m leaving—with or without you.”

  Sidney didn’t wait for his response. Instead, she grabbed several empty cans out of the trash and walked to the back door.

  50

  Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas

  April 15th

  It’d been a few days since Jesse had started working on the
floor where she suspected Ram was being held. Most of the nurses and soldiers were tight lipped on who the patients were behind the guarded and locked doors. None of the staff seemed to trust her since, at first, she was a prisoner in their facility before taking on the nursing duties. Jesse had been allowed into all the patient rooms but one. When she had tried to enter, Sergeant Duckett suddenly appeared and told her to move on. Right then and there, she knew her old partner was behind the thick steel door.

  Jesse had watched as the number of staff quickly dwindled through attrition. Infected patients had killed or infected many of the nurses and soldiers who’d been there when she first arrived. It was common now to hear the blare of alarms followed by screams and the sound of suppressed weapons fire. If it was bad inside this “secure” facility, she wondered how it was outside.

  “Still here?” Calvin, another nurse on her shift, asked rhetorically as he sat down at the table next to her. Jesse noticed he was still in his biohazard suit, minus the gloves and hood. This carelessness was becoming the norm among the remaining staff.

  “Can’t pass up the fine cuisine,” Jesse said, pushing her spoon around in her bowl of thick stew. “Swear I had this two days ago.”

  “You’re probably right.” He took a swallow of powdered orange juice from his glass. “I thought you would have split by now.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jesse gave him a sideways glance. “Why would I do that?”

  “You’re not a Fed like the rest of us. You split and they won’t shoot you,” Calvin said, glancing at his stale sandwich.

  “Shoot me?” Jesse frowned and dropped the spoon back into the brown slop. “You can’t be serious?”

  “This place is done for,” he whispered, leaning forward to angle his face away from the cameras in the corner of the cafeteria. “The Chief of Staff is bailing out. Our research is at a dead end here. The doctor is waiting on some important message of some kind, or his research is done. There ain’t no courier who’s going to get through that mess out there. If I were you I wouldn’t wait too long to make a break.”

  “This place seems pretty secure.”

  Calvin just shrugged and took a bite from his tasteless sandwich. After chewing it in silence he leaned back over. “I hear Briggs Field is a safe zone. A group of us are going to make a run for it. Try to blend in with the refugees.” He smiled. “You’re welcome to come along if you want.”

  “Briggs Field?” Jesse ran a hand through her long, black hair. The hard water here had really done a number on it. “So, we’re in Texas?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Calvin replied in a bad fake Texas drawl. “You didn’t know that?”

  Jesse frowned and shook her head. “What do you mean by Safe Zone?”

  “They really have kept you in the dark about what’s going on out there, haven’t they?” he asked, reaching for his sandwich. Jesse’s hand snaked out, quickly securing his wrist.

  “What do you mean by Safe Zone?”

  “Easy there,” Calvin said, pulling his arm free. “Most of the big cities have fallen to the infected. The military has pulled back to protect certain strategic areas.”

  “And Briggs is one of them?”

  “I guess.” Calvin rubbed his wrist where she’d gripped it. Suddenly an alarm sounded from down the hall. Jesse jumped to her feet and sprinted out of the cafeteria, followed by Calvin.

  “We have a loose infected!” a nurse in a torn biohazard suit screamed as she stumbled out of the open doorway of a patient room.

  “Shit!” Jesse, dressed just in scrubs, bolted past the nurse into the room. Calvin stopped outside and watched as two soldiers wrestled with an infected patient. The man was screaming and growling as he shoved one of the soldiers hard against the wall and then jumped on the other’s back. The soldier he shoved slammed his head against the wall and slumped to the floor, unconscious.

  “Get him off me!” the other soldier shouted as he tried to pull the crazed attacker off his back. The man viciously bit and clawed at the biohazard suit, trying to get to the soldier’s flesh. Jesse swiftly reached down and pulled the downed soldier’s 9mm pistol from his belt. Flipping off the safety, she chambered a round and jammed the barrel into the back of the infected man’s head. Squeezing the trigger, she turned away as blood and brain matter splashed across the soldier’s back.

  The infected patient’s body slid limply off the biohazard-suited trooper and fell to the floor. The alarm was still squealing as Sergeant Duckett stormed into the room, followed by a handful of other soldiers. Seeing the cavalry had finally arrived, Jesse spun the 9mm around in her hand and gave the butt end to Duckett. Smiling, shaking a bit, she stepped over the unconscious soldier and walked out of the room. The sergeant shook his head and handed the handgun to another of his men.

  “Will somebody please shut off the fucking alarm?” he shouted above the shrill, irritating claxon.

  Jesse walked down to the lobby, hoping to step outside for some fresh air, but stopped as four armed newcomers turned their guns in at the front desk. She had caught the eyes of the one woman in the group, and she knew instantly that their agenda was much different than what the doctor’s would be. She watched as the desk guards singled out the female for a search and shook her head at the lame slap-and-tickle tactics for such a cheap thrill. She almost laughed when two of her friends stepped forward, stopping that bullshit instantly. This was going to require a little surveillance.

  Our chance is coming, Ram. Something is going down today, and I aim to exploit it.

  51

  Blacksburg, Virginia

  April 21st

  “Hey! Hey! Look what I just found!” Lincoln shouted excitedly.

  “I can’t look. I’m driving,” Sidney replied angrily. She knew she was being a grouch. They were six hours into this trip, already running low on gas without any options short of siphoning gas from cars in parking lots, and the morning sickness was kicking her ass. If it got any worse before they got to the safe area so she could take care of it, she’d punch herself repeatedly in the stomach until the little clinger broke loose.

  When they left DC that morning, they’d only run into one of the infected. Oddly enough, it was the same woman in the cream dress that’d ripped the window screen on the day she ran to Lincoln’s house from the dangers of Dupont Circle. She was much worse for the wear than the last time Sidney had seen her on the front porch a month prior. Besides a lot of damage and staining on the dress, she was skin and bones, her body somehow still managing to function, even with obvious starvation taking its toll on her.

  The woman stumbled around from the side of the house, where Sidney thought she’d been trying to get in the fence, but the gate was on the opposite side. She tried to scream at Sidney and Lincoln as they threw their belongings into the back seat of the car, but it came out as a hoarse wheeze. They left her behind, still struggling to reach the people that she’d known were inside the house all along.

  Sidney glanced at her passenger quickly, asking, “What does it say?”

  He held up his cell phone with the screen facing her. A long power cord led from the phone to a USB jack in the car’s radio. It was the first time they’d had power for the phones since they used up all the juice when the power died, and Sidney had him searching the Internet for updates. “It says Atlanta has fallen.”

  Sidney slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded to a halt in the middle of the road. She wasn’t worried about another vehicle coming along any time soon; they hadn’t seen anything in hours.

  “What do you mean by ‘Atlanta has fallen’?” she demanded.

  “It’s the headline right here. It says—”

  “Here, just let me read it,” she said, taking the phone from him to avoid the annoying game of question and answer. “You keep an eye out for any of the infected.”

  He threw his hands in the air and said, “I’ve gotta pee anyways.”

  “Hold on. Don’t go out there while I’m looking at the article.”

>   “Why not?”

  “Because,” Sidney stated, shaking her head that he still just didn’t get it. “If I’m distracted by the phone, I can’t keep an eye on our surroundings while you go to the bathroom.” It was classic Horror Movie 101. She remembered thinking how awesome he was when he took her to the Exorcist Stairs; turns out that to him, it was just a tourist site. He wasn’t really into scary movies, preferring comedies and action flicks over intrigue and suspense. So much for being a student of film like he’d told her that morning in the restaurant. He did like old movies, but not the kinds that she liked.

  “Eh, I guess that makes sense,” he admitted, fumbling with the small folding knife she’d given him. It wasn’t much due to the blade length restrictions in DC, but it was better than nothing.

  Sidney skimmed the article on Lincoln’s phone. Basically, the infected hordes had followed the people fleeing southward. Atlanta was too spread out to effectively keep them all out, and when they made it into the refugee camps, all hell broke loose. Atlanta was just like everywhere on the East Coast that people had been trying to get to.

  That was yesterday.

  The CDC had been relocated weeks before to the relatively isolated city of El Paso in far western Texas. The article stated that the military there had erected massive obstacle belts to hinder the movement of the infected and were winning the battle against the brainless hordes. Propaganda bullshit, she groaned internally.

  Citizens were encouraged to try to stay ahead of the creatures, the large groups of which were limited by the speed they could travel on foot—although it was at a full-on sprint when they saw prey. There was a side note saying the Mexican government wished support for the United States and had moved military and police units to secure the Border Wall. No help would come from the south.

  New York City, on the other hand, appeared to be intact. After attempts to barricade the bridges leading to Staten and Long Island failed, they’d dropped entire sections of them, effectively creating an impassable obstacle that could be rebuilt later—the infected didn’t maintain the ability to swim and drowned by the thousands trying to get into the city. The military had also dropped sections of the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan and barricaded the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels that connected the island with New Jersey. The decision was made to completely destroy the eleven bridges leading out of Manhattan to Yonkers and the Bronx, although further land-based barricades near the New York – Connecticut border had proven effective to date.