She pulled at the blanket hems. “It does seem better than selling salvaged blankets...”
“And where are you living, Caroline?” He rested his hands on her shoulders.
She stared at the ground. “Foxer. Not the best of places across the river.”
“I’m in Creedy. Come live with me, and we can groom you to be the city’s first mayor. A woman, leading the way.”
“It does sound better. Are you sure I can be mayor?”
“I’ll provide the lights, the stage, and the script. You’ll win.”
She laughed. “This feels like that big break I always wanted.”
“And you deserve,” his hands slid to her waist.
She tried to move forward but Alan tugged at her hips. “Yes, I’ll do it. So long as I get my own place and new clothes if I win.”
“When. When you win, Caroline, you’ll get your own place and the best clothes that come into the city. You’ll need to look the part.”
She turned to face Alan, her hands pulled up to her chest, smiling wide. “I’ll do it. I’ll be your mayor.”
Alan drove her to his house, and served her wine, food, and compliments. And proceeded to fuck her three times that night.
And now, tonight was fucking Alan, and he had no intention of involving Caroline in informing her of what was transpiring, or how he would fix the mess.
The cameras peered in on one of Alan’s engineered drones. It stood in front of a storefront after tossing a woman across the street. “Sophie, zoom in on that woman.”
One screen’s view blipped to a different angle and zoomed in on the female figure sprawled on the pavement. “That’s Karen. What’s she doing there?”
“Karen? I don’t—” He trailed as a black clad drone and a second woman pointing a gun appear in the frame in front of the store. A flash erupted from the muzzle, and the zombie’s head jerked back, collapsing its body to the ground.
“Damn it!” Alan shouted. He turned to a different set of controls to commandeer one of the three remaining drones. Punching orders into the terminal, a new black figure entered the view and proceeded to bludgeon the gun-wielding woman against the wall.
He issued orders to the other two zombies to dispose of the citizens at the other end of the street who had turned. He slumped down into his chair and breathed deeply to steady his heart rate and increasing anger. Anger not that part of his plan was falling apart but anger at himself. There were details he overlooked. Who was Miles? And why was he on the truck with Julian? His engineered drones were now in the esteemed part of the city, visible to many of its well-to-do citizens. It would only be less than a few hours before Caroline would call, asking what to do. He began thinking of a story to explain the trucks as part of something Nasher planned. And how to explain two dead criminals inside.
“Sophie, is anyone alive in the truck that crashed?”
“Let me check,” she said, switching the video feeds to zero in on the cab. Within the broken frame of the cab, shattered glass and hard contrasting light from the street lamps, the feed strained to show a figure slumped over the steering wheel. She activated the heat camera, and the body glowed red and orange.
A red arm came in from the left side of the frame. She clicked the keyboard to a different camera and turned off the heat view. Two men, one climbing into the cab and one standing outside it, appeared in grainy black and white. The man outside the cab loosely held a gun and a black mask covered his face. Alan leaned in. The mask bore the outlines of a skull, similar to the video from the alley. He considered the possibilities. Ed, his police chief, said they only hired to follow and pick up Julian. Was the man in the mask that person? With a series of brisk keyboard taps, he ordered one of his drones to investigate the truck. He needed Julian alive, and letting someone else take him was not an outcome he liked.
“Did you get a hold of Ed?” he asked.
“He’s on his way in.”
Alan neglected to ask Ed for details out of plausible deniability should anything catastrophic happen and they each needed a way to deny their involvement. But now, he’d need Ed to share those details.
Sophie pointed to a monitor above her head. “A ZMT crew has been dispatched to the scene.”
Rolling into the last two screens, the lights of the ZMT car flashed as two crew members jumped out and pointed their weapons at Alan’s drones.
Alan, still fixated on retaining his ability to control Julian to lure Nasher out of hiding, jerked his head up, bit his lip and clenched his jaw. His drones would need to escape the crew with minimal damage in case he needed them to give chase. But they were outgunned, and despite their merciless robotic manner, a direct hit to their face would be fatal. He already lost one.
“Let it arrive. Let them clean up,” he said.
“Should I issue any other orders?”
“No, let dispatch handle it as they see fit.” He looked to the console that controlled his drones, and instructed two to subdue the ZMTs and take their weapons. Kill if necessary.
Alan’s eyes flickered back and forth to both sets of screens. He rubbed his hands along his temples, massaging away any signs of perspiration or stress. He brooded that he was adapting, adapting to a situation that someone else fucked up, someone whom would be held responsible for their fuck up. Or improvising as Caroline would say. He was building on the fly. Such decisions with incomplete information and best guesses caused his brain to cycle through too many decision points, overloading his mental energy for the things he needed to do to serve the city.
A figure now crawled out of cab, with a slumped Julian over its shoulders, as the man in the mask caught them on the ground.
“Sophie, ID the person without the mask when you can.”
Sophie, instead of waiting for a new view of the unmasked figure, brought up video from just a few minutes ago. She zoomed, isolated the face, and applied the recognition algorithm. A dossier of Paul’s information slid into the screen with his city identification picture at the top.
Alan squeezed her shoulder with his hand. “That was impressive.”
Sophie blushed and kept her eyes down to the keyboard. “I figured that would be—”
“Why is Paul getting the driver out of the cab? Isn’t he Karen’s boyfriend, fiancé, whatever?”
“Yes, and—”
“Did you ID the other guy?”
“No, the—”
“Stay focused and ID him if we can,” he said, squeezing her knee, returning his gaze to the screens. “No... No!”
On the monitor, Paul and the man in the mask ran to an SUV, carrying Julian with them, haphazardly throwing his body in the vehicle. Mask fired his gun at Alan’s drone, directly into its visor, killing it, and ran to the SUV and drove away.
Alan yelled, banged his fist on the chair’s armrests. “God damn it!”
Sophie’s body jumped at the outburst, and Alan feverishly worked his personal console.
“Fuck it. They’ll kill, taking the guns, after all.”
Chapter 11
A staccato of gunfire thundered outside the clothing shop where Karen scrambled behind a counter covered in glittering trinkets. She peered around the side. A crew of ZMTs fired at two of the commandos, while a third turned and ran into the street. Racks of designer clothing hovered like ghostly apparitions lit by flashing red and blue lights from the ZMT vehicle.
Two of the commandos swayed momentarily, bearing impacts of gunshots, one falling to all fours, while the other remained upright. Karen could barely hear a man’s voice shout, “Stand down and surrender! Stand down! Do not approach the vehicle!”
Protocol dictated every effort be made at a peaceable outcome, despite initial shots fired. ZMTs were to meet the offender with force, if violence occurred, de-escalate, and contain. This worked to dispose of zombies or the random theft, domestic abuse or bar fight that a ZMT crew encountered. The city’s crime rate rarely called for assault tactics on its living population, but Greenport’s citizens
, accepted the tactics, weary of Plague era violence.
Karen knew at least two crews would arrive. Dispatch protocol directed that, especially when she sent a distress order of multiple victims turning, and no doubt those along the street had already called in the crash. Although, the ZMT crew had nothing in their training for whatever the commandos were. The crew would assume they were alive, not undead, and approach them as such. Karen recalled news stories of the pre Plague of drug addicts hopped up on PCP, rampaging even after dozens of gunshots to their bodies. She rubbed her fingers that had touched the black ooze of the helmet. These things might be on drugs, but they weren’t alive, nor were they the zombies she knew from the Plague.
She reached for Nicholas’ tablet and sent another message to dispatch: Kill suspects on site. Shoot visors.
“Have they stopped the offenders?” Nicholas said, huddled with his hands wrapped around the back of his neck and elbows drawn in to his chest. “The gunfire has appeared to cease.”
Karen set the tablet down and looked around the counter again. The commando that fell to its hands and knees stood. It leapt to its right, bounding off the brick just below the store’s glass window, vaulting itself at the ZMT truck. A shotgun blast shattered the window into flying shards, missing its intended target. A man’s voice went silent mid scream.
The other figure sprinted toward the passenger side of the truck, keeping its figure low and small. It passed through the headlight beam, its shadow briefly casting across Karen’s eyes, throwing itself arms first at the ZMT truck’s door. A voice yelped as the metal frame crushed the ZMT.
“No, stop, sto—!”
A gunshot burst, followed by a series of dull thuds. Another shotgun blast sounded, and Karen presumed the third member of the crew lay dead inside the cab.
Beyond the carnage in front of the store, a quick succession of gunshots, from what sounded like a handgun, went off. Two doors slammed, an engine rumbled to life and the screeching of tires reverberated through the street. Karen stood, careful to keep her head barely above the top of clothing racks. The ZMT truck shook, and the two commandos broke from pillaging the truck’s supplies and ran to follow the vehicle, each strapped with whatever gun they could carry or holster to their bodies.
She crept to the front of the store, as glass crackled under her shoes. A siren’s wail approached from the left, and a fire truck and a ZMT vehicle parked two shops down. She ran outside, waving her arms above her head at the ZMT rig.
“Over here! Help!”
She stopped by the partially opened passenger side door where a female tech’s legs dangled. The tech lay sprawled across the seat, fingers twitching and chest straining to rise against the weight of the tactical vest. A trio of ZMTs reached the truck. Two went to the door and Karen backed away, while the third sprinted to the back of the truck.
“She’s still alive,” she said.
Karen stepped aside and hurried to the back of the truck, where the third tech climbed into the cab. Drawers and cabinets hung open, medical supplies littered every surface and blood splattered the back wall. An unrecognizable face and neck were shredded with buckshot, muscle glistening. The tech extended his arm and reached his rubber gloved hand, eyes held shut and jaw clenched, shaking his head. “He’s dead.”
Karen stepped to her left. The rig’s driver lay face down, crumpled in a pool of blood.
“So is the driver,” she said, stepping back to view the ransacked cab.
The third tech, whose name tag read Alex, turned to her. “What the hell happened?”
She looked down, squatted, palmed a gauze package nervously into her hands and played back the entire sequence of events in her mind.
“A—that truck that’s turned over in the street, it came barreling down, crashed and turned over. I guess. I got knocked over, actually. Paul knocked me out of the way into a coffee shop. Paul. Is Paul out there?”
Before Alex could answer, Karen jumped up and ran to the middle of the street, still clutching the gauze packet.
“Paul!” She spun around and yelled again, “Paul!”
Alex ran beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find Paul. We’ll find him, okay? What else happened? Who shot the crew in that rig?”
Breathing deeply, Karen brushed her hair behind her ears. “I came out of the coffee shop to see the street.” She pointed to the trailer of the semi. “And I looked inside the torn-up trailer. There were these—men. I’m not sure they were men. These commando looking things.”
“Commandos?”
“Yes! They were dressed in all black, wore these motorcycle helmets that shielded their face,” she said, surveying the street. “There’s one right there, by the semi.”
Karen and Alex approached the black commando, laying facedown. To Karen, the body looked like a clothed plank of a man, motionless. Splinters of its reflective visor floated in a pool of slick ebony liquid, similar to the other commando she inspected. At the base of its skull, a silver and maroon angular shape protruded out of the helmet.
Karen knelt and wrapped her hands around the helmet.
“Wait, what are you doing,” Alex said, pulling her arms back.
“I want to see its face, and what’s on the back of its head,” she said, moving the head forward, exposing more of the silver patch. Her fingers traced the bottom contour of the helmet, slick with fluid, until she stopped at the jaw. Two bolts, one on each side, went in, like the other one. “I need a saw. A bone saw.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not fucking kidding,” she said, her patience fleeting as the adrenaline wore off. “Get a saw.”
Alex waved to the crew of fire fighters making their way down the street, checking the damaged cars, sweeping debris and containing spilled oil and gas. “I need a bone saw, now!”
“A bone saw?” one yelled back.
“Yes!”
The fire fighter ran to his truck’s tool box and jogged to Karen and Alex. “Here you go,” he said, handing over a grey metal tube to Alex, that looked like a flashlight, but with a six-inch circular saw at the end.
“Alex, take the saw and cut the bolts that are attached to the jaw. They appear to be holding the helmet on,” Karen said.
Alex settled to his knees slowly. He patted down the body, cautiously moving up to its shoulders, and placed two fingers on its neck, searching for a pulse. He moved his fingers up to the jawline, discovering a cold, metallic rod.
“Hmph. Weird. Someone’s going to have to hold its head while I do this.”
Karen motioned forward, but the fire fighter stopped her, brushing his suit’s sleeves and tapping his helmet. “I’m wearing gear. We don’t know if its contagious.”
The fire fighter lowered his visor, knelt and held the commandos head. Alex removed his shirt and wrapped it around his face, and put on a pair of disposable glasses. Karen stepped backwards once Alex gripped the bone saw with both hands and flicked the switch. A high-pitched hum sounded from the saw, and transformed into a squeal with sparks when the blade touched the first bolt. Metal and plastic shavings spit about Karen’s feet. The rest of the fire fighting crew gathered around, transfixed on the removal of the helmet.
“We found one just like this, about twenty yards back,” a voice said.
Karen didn’t respond, and Alex lurched forward, finished with the first bolt. He pulled back, turned off the saw, and placed it on the ground beside him. He groaned and shook his arms and hands, flexing his hands open and closed. Rolling his neck, he picked up the saw, braced and turned it on again.
“The other one had its face shot in,” said the same voice. “Who is he?”
“I think a better question is what is it,” said another. “Someone on the street said two more disappeared after they attacked the ZMT rig.”
Alex cut through the other bolt and held steady, turning it off. The blade’s whine quieted as he leaned back and removed the shirt wrapped around his face.
“Y
ou sure you want to do this here?” said Alex, looking to Karen. A growing crowd streamed to the source of the noise.
“Do it!” a woman’s voice cried. “We deserve to know who it is.”
The heat of the crowd grew as more ambled forth. Shoes shuffled and voices murmured, bits and pieces of conversation floated behind her, indiscernible as anything coherent. She realized everyone stared at her, waiting her command. She took control of the scene from the fire fighters and ZMTs, and directed them to forcefully remove a helmet from a dead body. They all knew her, or knew of her. Radios would carry her voice on occasion, or her staff would use her name when relaying messages. All the ZMTs, through Paul, knew who she was. Despite her position as the head of the city’s call center, the attention of authority swelled sharply in her stomach. Alex and the now foursome of fire fighters stared at her, and the sudden trust for her to make a decision pressed down on her mind. To stave off the anxiety, she’d need to take control of the scene one step at a time.
“Karen?” the fire fighter said, his hands now on the commando’s helmet. “Should I remove the helmet?”
“Yes. Yes, remove it. First,” she looked at the second fire fighter, a woman, across from her and read her name tag. “Roberts—”
“Ma’am?”
“Call and radio for a rig to transfer these bodies back to the hospital.”
Roberts jogged backwards. “On it,” and ran to her truck.
She scanned the uniforms of the other two male fire fighters. “Carlos, Moretti, please help keep the crowd back while Alex and,” she paused, eyeing the last fire fighter, a man named Varney. “Varney, assist me with the body.”
Carlos and Moretti nodded and walked to Karen’s side. Carlos spoke loudly, “Let’s move back a bit. Back it up.”
“Okay,” Karen said, rubbing the sweat of her palms on her hips. “Let’s do this.”
Varney palmed each side of the helmet and pulled, while Alex braced the commando’s shoulders from moving forward. The exposed flesh on its neck was a necrotic grayish green, and at each tug to remove the helmet, seams of skin split open, oozing black.
Survivor Response Page 11
