I ask where, how big? He asks where are you. I tell him I just got onto 101 from 85, near the Ames Research Center. He tells me he’ll get word to me, when he finds out more.
THERE’S A BITE survivor reunion at Harris Ranch in Coalinga. It takes place every three months, and is sponsored by the government—an opportunity for them to monitor our health, extract new blood samples for possible bite inoculations and, just maybe, permanent cures for the infected. There are only around three hundred of us in California, and we’re very close. None of us has ever missed a reunion yet.
But Harris Ranch is on I-5, which makes the news troubling. It’s made even more troubling by the fact that the freeway is bracketed by flatlands and low hills, making it possible for almost anyone on the road to see shambler herds coming from miles away. And believe me, everyone keeps looking around when venturing out of the safe zones.
So where did this shambler sighting come from?
It could be a mistake, a kneejerk report from a jumpy, sleepless trucker. Or it could be smugglers.
There have been rumors of underground traffic in plague victim smugglers. Someone gets infected, their friends and family get desperate and try to bring them to any number of thieves and quacks that promise a cure for a small fortune.
Sometimes, someone fucks up—a badly-locked door, a split-second distraction, an unforeseen accident, and you have a small outbreak that needs to be quashed, and fast.
Sometimes, you hear of something even crazier—like that Trampier guy up in Sacramento, who suddenly decided he could cure plague victims by faith alone. He ended up attracting hundreds of desperate souls who smuggled their infected loved ones to his ranch. When the government sorted out that mess—and thank God they did—it did not end well.
I DECIDE TO enjoy a pitstop along 101, to grab an early lunch and a quick bathroom break, hoping Mr. Russino can get more news to me before the long push down I-5.
I roll the ’Stang into a Sizzler’s parking lot, hoping to grab some shrimp and steak and a tall, cool glass of lemonade.
When I sit at my table, I find that the waitresses don’t seem to be particularly talkative today—news of the shambler sightings up in San Franciso and in the East Bay has made them edgy. So I keep to myself, slather the butter sauce onto the shrimp, and down them in rapid succession before turning my attention to the steak.
I slice off a piece, and it’s tender and slightly pink at the center—just the way I like it.
Not so long ago, I always ordered my meat well done, to the consternation of chefs everywhere. Unlike everyone else, it wasn’t because I was concerned that I’d gotten a batch of infected beef; it was because I was afraid that the taste of blood might trigger something.
But then even the infection thing turned out to be just mad rumor-mongering—the plague never made the jump to other mammals. Apparently even the hungriest runner will ignore thousands of heads of cattle and go straight for the nearest human.
I hate runners. Not only can they run, they can climb stairs, use tools, even throw a punch or two that will lay you out if you don’t know they’re there. Fortunately they can’t talk and don’t bother with hygiene, so it’s usually easy to stop a shotgun mob from killing you by just making sure you dress up that day or learn to shout or whistle loud enough for everyone to hear.
Whistling loudly also helps catch the attention of busy waitresses, when you’re trying to ask for your bill.
BACK IN THE ’Stang, I roar onto 101 and slide into the fast lane. The laws against speeding are rarely enforced anymore—they just keep track of you with all the cameras and sensors wired up and down the freeways until you get to your destination. Then they either ticket you or arrest you.
Since I don’t want either, I keep my speed at 90 mph until I get stuck behind some car or SUV slavishly following the outdated 70 mph limit.
City streets give way to barely green hills and farmland, once I shift from 101 South to the I-5 South. From here on, I-5 is a two-lane freeway going south. I look left, across the gap to check out the vehicles on I-5 North.
There are some, but not as many as on our side. My foot eases off on the accelerator, and I check the shortwave bands for chatter. There’s a roadblock up ahead, and cars and trucks are being routed through a relatively even patch of dirt between I-5 South and I-5 North. You can hear the fear and the speculation running through the voices of the truckers and travelers. Outbreak, it has to be.
I check the I-5 information band on the AM frequencies, but all I get is static.
I try one final time to get through to Mr. Russino, but there’s no connection despite a strong signal. So I change tactics—I thumb through my phone’s contact list for the Harris Ranch reservation desk and make a call, but get an answering service.
The ’Stang rumbles onto the freeway shoulder, and I floor it. I don’t have my lights—didn’t think I’d need them—but I turn on my hazards and high beams and hope they’ll be enough, under the noonday sun, to warn other drivers about my ill-advised approach.
AT THE FRONT of the line, right where the vehicles start making their dusty U-turn onto I-5 North, there are two big rigs blocking the road. I pull alongside one, turn off the engine, holster the Glock, and approach the driver.
“You’re not a HARPer,” he says, when I get close enough to shout at. He points the barrel of his shotgun away from my general direction and squints through the glare to get a better look at me.
“No, and you’re lucky because they don’t like being called that.” I flash my PRT badge. “What’s going on here?”
He points down the road to the three-car pileup and a lone figure walking in a slow circle around the damaged cars. “Fucked if I know,” he says, a slight edge to his voice. “Is this an outbreak?”
I shrug. “I haven’t been told anything. I guess I’d better find out. You got a radio?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” I say, pulling out the Glock and racking the slide. “I’m going to check this out—lock your doors and hop on the Marconi. Let all the people back there know what’s going on.”
“Aren’t we supposed to wait for—?”
“Yeah, remember the last time we all waited for someone to do something?”
His eyes narrow, and he takes another glance at the wreckage down the road. He revs his engine once, then nods to me to go. “Good luck,” he says.
A HUNDRED FEET away from the cars, and I can see the walking figure more clearly: Caucasian, late forties, bleeding from the head, dazed look in his eyes. He looks right at me a couple of times as he wanders aimlessly near the vehicles.
One of the vehicles is still idling, but I can’t tell which one. There seem to be people inside, but I can’t see clearly enough in the early afternoon glare.
At fifty feet, I stop in my tracks and raise my gun to line up the Glock’s iron sights with the wandering man’s head before I call out.
“Hey, mister!” I yell. “Are you okay?”
The man’s face hardens into a scowl, as his head swivels toward me. His gaze locks onto my face, and he charges right at me.
I squeeze off two shots. Both miss. I grit my teeth, aim right between his eyes, and wait until he’s only five feet away to pull the trigger. The bullet punctures his forehead, tunnels through his brain, and exits the back of his skull in an explosion of black blood and cranial matter. The runner topples into a heap at my feet, and I shuffle backward quickly to get some distance, quietly berating myself on my lack of skill.
Then I hear the sound of doors being wrenched open—a black woman, an Asian man, and a handful of others force themselves out of the wreckage. All have the same cast to their features; all have the same wild look in their eyes; all have locked their gazes on me.
Too many. And chances are, they’re all runners.
In the span of a second, I safety the Glock, holster it, and begin running back to my car.
LESS THAN TWO hundred feet back to my car, I hear the engines of the semis r
oar to life. They lurch forward and begin to bear down on me. I start to veer away, but a quick glance out of the corner of my eye shows me that my undead admirers are following my lead.
I swerve back to the center of the road, cursing my lack of foresight. Squinting, I see the truck drivers frantically waving me to the side as they continue their resolute approach toward me and my grisly entourage.
Without thinking, I go for broke, aiming for the scant space between the 18-wheelers. Neither swerves, and at the last second I dive face down between them.
Sounds: the roar of engines, the rumble of tires, the wet crunch of metal meeting fragile flesh, the keening cry of brakes.
I roll onto my back, and bring my gun up—but no runners were fast enough to dodge the trucks.
Scrambling to my feet, I shakily make my way to the trucks—and then to the wreckage—to make sure that all the shamblers and runners are put out of their misery.
TWO HOURS LATER, I’m southbound on I-5.
According to the HARP officers that finally showed up, some renegade militia group apparently sabotaged the communications along the freeway and left the three carloads of runners on the road. Apparently, they’d done this nasty little trick up and down the state. Fortunately, all of them were contained.
The trucks were impounded for decontamination, but the drivers were cited for their bravery. They tried to bring me in on it, but I played up the reckless fool angle so I could get back on track. Thankfully, both truckers swore right and left that I was never bitten—I’d have to call in some pretty high favors, if a sharp-eyed Patrol officer discovered the bite scar on my shoulder.
“TONY! YOU MADE it!”
I smile at Olivia, my dance partner the last time I was at Harris Ranch. “Wouldn’t miss it, ma’am.”
Like me, she found out she was immune last year in Los Angeles. We’d been able to book passage through the Grapevine, but bite marks on our bodies were discovered on the road, and we were left to die on that cold, twisting ridge to Northern California.
Thankfully, her father—a state senator—was able to find her by tracking her cell phone. When they caught up to us, she insisted that I be rescued as well.
Her father has been repeatedly praised for his visionary stance in protecting our rights and advancing the cause of research into the plague, but that admiration might dry up, if his daughter’s secret is ever revealed. So officially, she’s here to represent him, and the rest are here to represent the hope of humanity.
And me? I’m here hoping for good news.
Maybe they’ll announce that they’ve isolated whatever it is that makes us immune, or that they’ve found a way to inoculate people without killing them, or that they’ve found a cure. Maybe they’ll confirm once and for all that we’re not secretly carriers who can pass on the infection with a bite, or a kiss, or a night of reckless abandon. Maybe they’ll confirm that our kids will be immune, and that future generations will not have to deal with the fear of former humans slavering for living flesh.
Maybe tonight, it’ll all happen at last.
Black Sun
by Todd Nelsen
To sacrifice oneself for the greater good will always be my calling. To die for those in need, my greatest surrender. I am the fire in the night. I am hope, when no hope can be found. I am the clenched fist and the open hand. I commit myself to the ashes, and I rise again.
Eternally.
I am.
“Doran.”
His voice called to me. It felt far away, abysmally distant, as if I was in the deepest of oceans and drifting. And I was, in a way. I couldn’t recall what brought me to these depths. Nor could I comprehend who was calling to me now, bringing me back to the furthest shore.
Still, the voice whispered again. It was unrelenting.
“Doran, wake,” it repeated. “We need you.”
My eyelids fluttered open, and a penetrating light, a light I hadn’t seen for a long, long while, seized my attention, like a beacon, and became a bright pinprick in my mind.
Seeing me stir, the voice grew more excited, in tandem with my waking consciousness: “My god, you survived. I don’t see how. I was sure the separation would kill you.”
Was I dead? No, I thought. This voice was human. It was real.
“I don’t die so easily,” I croaked. I was surprised at the sound of my own voice, unaware of it until I heard it. It was unfamiliar. It had been so long since I’d spoken. But I knew I spoke the truth.
I didn’t.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You don’t know?” He must have stood above me, bent down over my body. I could feel his hand caressing my arm, coaxing me away from the dark place I was before. I reached out and touched his hand. It took a great strain on my part to move my arm. My body didn’t ache; in fact, I could feel very little. It was more like mush, every muscle and nerve ending dead. His hand was firm, however, substantial beneath my own. This I could feel, and it was comforting.
“My name is John Cordell,” he said. “We’ve never met, though it would have been an honor.” He meant these words, too, I knew. There was an open admiration in him; he didn’t bother to hide it. “You were imprisoned, Doran,” he said, “imprisoned by the 13.” He paused. “Do you remember now?”
The 13, I thought... thirteen planets… another world… another galaxy… 13 females, who proclaimed themselves...
My god.
“Aeliana!” I shouted. I remembered her face, beautiful, yet made cruel and twisted by her lust for power. I reached out, but my reflexes weren’t as quick as they should have been. This was lucky for the man who called himself John Cordell. If I would have been even at 1/100th of my strength, I could have crushed his neck like an aluminum can, without thinking, so enraged was I.
I wasn’t myself.
I felt his hand give way and leave my arm.
“Much has happened,” he said, stepping back. I could dimly make out his thin silhouette in the light. My sight was returning. “The world is in a terrible danger,” he said. “A great evil has come. You have to help us,” he pleaded. “You have to. You’re our only hope.”
Hope.
Yes, hope; there was always that.
“Help me to my feet,” I replied. I was beginning to remember now, finding myself again; it happened quickly… what I was, and what I stood for… what I meant to this man and his kind… the blue planet I’d come to inhabit and protect… how I was tricked and held captive here against my will… a will to save… to make better… to make RIGHT… not like the others, not like Aeliana, not like the 13.
My sight adjusted even more; his image became less hazy; he took human shape before me, no longer smeared ink on the foreground. But he was cautious and remained out of arm’s reach. He knew what I was capable of. I knew what I was capable of, too.
“Come, friend,” I said, coaxing him back. “Don’t be afraid.” Color began to blend with my vision. He was in a silver jump suit, his skin pale beneath it. His boots were white, like snow. There was a visor on his oval face. Behind him was a control panel of various switches and dials. I glanced down and could see my arm was clothed in a sleeve of black; spidery shapes, of a bright yellow, were embroidered across it.
Or were they flames?
Yes, flames. Flames golden, like the sun.
POWER, my mind replied.
STRENGTH. Incredible strength.
“Don’t be frightened, human,” I repeated. “I’m not going to hurt you. You must help me stand. I’m weak.”
#
As I regained a bit of my strength, he explained to me how I was captured. My own unique abilities were used against me, it seemed. Once the 13 lured me in, like a fly in a trap, the light energy, the true source of my power, escaped me and was contained. The more I struggled against it the greater the entrapment became. It didn’t matter how strong I was or how powerful I’d become; in fact, my own strength was ultimately my downfall, so was my desire to assist those in need. I’d heard a
distress signal from Earth’s moon, my acute senses detecting it, and I followed, just as I always did, without reservation.
Little did I know what awaited me there.
The 13’s method was quite ingenious. The technology used was nothing like that of Earth. It was from far away, beyond the outer reaches of the known galaxy, a culture and civilization at the penultimate peaks of its advancement, a civilization gone wrong. The cells hungrily fed on my body, drained me of my resources. The more I fought against them, the more they took, until there was nothing left, and I was a shell of my former self, trapped in a continual cycle of regeneration and loss.
Exhaustion followed then, and I slept, if you call it sleep… and waited.
This was what the man John Cordell meant by “separation.” The light energy stored in my body was as much a part of me as blood is to a human heart, breath to a lung. I couldn’t function without it. I did have one question, though.
“How did you free me?” I asked. It seemed strange to me this human could do what I’d been unable.
“It was easy,” he replied. “I simply reached in and pulled you out.” He said it matter-of-factly.
I looked back over my shoulder, to the adjacent room, where I’d been imprisoned, beyond the transparent shielding, and there stood the three cells. They were oblong disks of bright silver. They didn’t look like much from where we were, but I knew what they contained. My current weakness was evidence to it.
My power was still in those cells.
I could sense it. Stored there. How could they store so much energy? It seemed improbable. I’d never taken my strength to the limits before—when it came down to it, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was capable of—but it didn’t seem possible. On a planet such as Earth, living among humans and their human frailty, it was dangerous to do so. Innocents could be hurt. Lives could be lost.
OUTPOURING: Typhoon Yolanda Relief Anthology Page 41
