There was the middle school, but she assumed that to be out of the question, due to the fact that it would most likely be filled to capacity with people. People, at the moment from what she’d just witnessed, she would rather avoid. Then it hit her, her mother-in-law’s place. Terry was constantly calling her husband whenever there was a particularly bad storm heading their way, fearful that her little boy would be swept away in their meager little trailer. Karen would tease her husband about it all the time, telling him she could see where he got his paranoia from. It made perfect sense, though. Her mother-in-law’s home was located within a small forested area. There were several homes surrounding the property; however, they were still somewhat isolated. Their home was built into the side of a small hill, the lower two levels being the ground floor, and the basement were constructed of poured concrete and red brick, while the upper levels of the house, where the sleeping and storage areas were, were constructed of wood.
Firmly decided on her course of action, Karen grabbed Kyle’s hiking pack and began to fill it with nonperishable food items, water purification tablets, diapers, and several liter-sized bottles of water. She then began looking through the armaments that adorned Kyle’s gun safe. She reached up and withdrew a tactical ballistic vest, one of Kyle’s spares. She slipped the garment on and secured the Velcro straps in place, adjusting them as tight as they could go. The vest was fucking huge, well, on her at least. By comparison, Kyle stood about two feet taller and had a solid hundred pounds on her.
She secured the shotgun to her back with a strap and slid an extra ten shells in the cartridge holders that adorned the shoulder straps. She then grabbed a duty rig and wrapped it around her waist, snapping it in place with a clasp.
The kids stared at her wide eyed when she withdrew a Glock 9 mm pistol and slid it into the duty rig’s holster.
She then pulled out five full magazines, each holding fifteen rounds. She secured two of them to the gun belt’s magazine holders and tossed the extra three in to the side pocket of the backpack. She then grabbed a few extra boxes of ammo. She limited the amount due to the weight of the ammo. As small as she was, the backpack was already almost more than she could handle.
She shouldered the heavy pack, letting out a grunt as she heaved it onto her back. Goddamn thing had to weigh at least sixty pounds, she thought as she wrestled it into place. She turned toward the children, almost laughing at the looks on their small faces as they eyed her with what looked like a sense of awe and astonishment.
Karen steeled her expression and addressed the children. “Okay, guys, I want you all to line up behind me and hold hands. I want you to focus on getting into the van. Do not worry about anything else that is going on, just get in the van. Can everyone do that?” she asked.
The children nodded frantically in unison.
They were scared, Karen could tell; and from what she’d just seen outside, they had every right to be. “First thing we are going to do is walk into the living room, and then I’m going to look outside and make sure it’s safe for us to go to the van. I need you to be brave and very quiet, and when I say go, I need everyone to hurry over and get in the van. Don’t worry about who gets what chair, or even buckling up, just get in and sit down. Am I clear?” The children nodded again, most of them tightly holding their lips closed to help them against making even the slightest peep.
Karen led them through the bathroom, instructing them to take care avoiding the patches of sticky coagulated blood that coated the floor and walls of the closet. Slowly and quietly, they made it to the living room. Karen held out a hand, motioning for them to stop while she crept forward. She reached up next to the open door frame and retrieved her car keys that were hanging on a wooden hook, trying her best to keep out of sight as she did so. She grasped the van’s electronic lock transmitter in one hand and slowly pulled the Glock out of her holster with the other. She debated hitting the button for the remote starter her husband had installed for her last Christmas, but decided against it, not wanting to draw attention to her and the children until they were in the vehicle. She drove a dark-blue Honda Odyssey van, and she was thankful that it sat eight and came equipped with automatic sliding doors that could be controlled with the transmitter she held in her hand. This would save them some time and allow them to jump right in as they ran; not having to stop and open the doors could possibly save their lives. Now the only thing she was concerned with was getting them shut fast enough once they were inside.
Karen slowly craned her head around the open storm door; the outer screen door was completely demolished. The screen itself was torn to shreds, and the aluminum frame was bent all to hell. She looked around the immediate area of her home and the driveway, and it appeared that the coast was clear. There were people running or milling around just a few houses down, so they would have to make this quick, or they were going to be in a world of trouble. She motioned to the children to come and stand behind her. “Are you ready, guys?” she whispered.
The kids nodded fearfully.
Karen took a deep breath and held it as she stepped around the door. Crouching low, she began to push the ruined screen door open. She gritted her teeth as the warped bottom of the aluminum door caught on her wooden front porch. The door scraped along, and she hoped to hell that the sound was louder in her head than it was outside. Quickly she looked up, hoping they hadn’t been spotted. She realized that the thought had come too late, as a figure standing only two houses down heard the noise and stopped what he was doing and turned in their direction, cocking his head to one side like a dog. Like a very mean, feral, rabid dog. “Shit,” Karen hissed to herself as she prepared to make a run for it. She hit the button that controlled the van’s sliding passenger door. The door shuddered for a moment and began its cycle.
At that moment, the confused man realized there was something there worth his attention. Several others in the area also turned at the noise.
“Run!” Karen shouted to the children as she slammed the screen door open and held it for the kids—ushering them through. She pushed the button to the remote starter, figuring stealth was no longer a concern, and the engine sputtered and started up.
The rabid-looking men and women seemed to come alive at that moment. They howled and began running straight for her and the children.
“Get to the van!” she shouted as the kids piled through the porch gate and down the rickety wooden stairs, several of them nearly tripping as they headed for the open door to the Honda Odyssey. She had to give them credit as she watched them hop into the van, not a one of them argued about who was going to sit where or complained that such-in-such was touching them. So this is what it takes to get them to behave in a car, she mused.
A ghoul was getting dangerously close as she throttled off the steps. Karen lifted the 9 mm and opened fire on a man. Three rounds punched him center mass, and it seemed to do nothing but piss him off. “Holy shit!” Karen screamed as she ran to the van. Quickly, she grabbed the sliding door’s handle, and gave it a yank. Slowly, painfully slow she thought, the door began to close. Karen stood there, guarding the entrance as the man with the three holes in his chest ran straight for her. Karen kicked out with her foot and planted the sole of her tennis shoe right into his ruined chest, knocking him back and to the ground. The impact caused her knee to buckle slightly, and pain shot up to her thigh.
Quickly she limped over to the driver-side door and flung it open; she climbed into the driver’s seat as the man she had just kicked scrambled to his feet. The elderly woman she had seen get bitten from the window surprised her and slammed right into her open door, pinning her leg halfway in and halfway out. Karen pushed the door open hard, knocking the old bat back a step, and yanked her foot in.
She barely registered the gash in her ankle as she thrust the key in the ignition and hit the gas. The car shot forward in the driveway, slamming her into a basketball hoop in front of the house, knocking it over, it smacked against the side of the home, and Karen curse
d at her own stupidity. She threw the car into reverse as five other infected people came hurtling into the sides of the van. They began beating on the doors and windows with such ferocity Karen was afraid they would break through the windows.
The kids were screaming in the backseats, huddling together to get away from the snarling faces of their attackers.
Karen hit the gas again and spun the wheel as they rocketed out of the driveway, crashing over three people in the process. The van rocked back and forth as she threw it into drive and thrust forward, feeling the distinct crunch under the tires as bones were ground into paste on the asphalt. She sped toward the intersection at the end of her street, barely slowing as she veered right and swerved to avoid a derelict jeep parked in the middle of the roadway.
As she looked around, she noticed people running at her from all directions. Bodies were strewn across manicured lawns; homes were set ablaze, with black smoke, making it hard to see much of anything in front of her.
Karen slid to a stop as another car sped her direction, struck a pedestrian, and slammed into a concrete guardrail, almost flipping up and over into the creek bed below. It fell back and landed on its roof and teetered back to the roadway. Karen pulled the van around, trying her best to avoid the shattered glass and debris. A flat tire at this point in time would more or less spell doom for her and her precious cargo. Karen made it through the chaos of the streets in her neighborhood and turned quickly onto Route 40. She hoped against hope that she would be able to make the fifteen-mile drive to her mother-in-law’s place, in all of this madness.
She dug around in her pocket for her cell phone. She pulled out her Nokia, pushed number one, and hit send. The phone speed dialed her husband’s cell phone, and she held it to her ear. Before it could even connect, the phone clicked, and then made a horrible screeching sound. Karen pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it wide eyed for a second before returning her attention to the road. “What the hell was that?” she asked of no one in particular.
She tried the call again and again; she got the same strange noise. “Damn,” she stated, annoyed. She hoped that when Kyle made it home—if he made it home. The thought entered her prefrontal cortex before she could stop it, and she shuddered involuntarily. He would figure out where she had gone. It was a logical choice being that she was from out of state when they got married, and she had only had a handful of friends in the area. Yes, there was no doubt in her mind, he would figure out where she’d gone. She hoped at least because she had no idea how in the hell she was going to get through all of this without him. She had always teased him about his paranoia, but on the other side, she had always said she felt pretty sure of herself that if the shit hit the fan, she would be fine because he knew what to do. Now she was alone with a car full of kids, and the shit was in fact hitting the fan. She rocketed forward and prayed. She was an atheist, but what the hell. It couldn’t hurt, she thought as she sped down the roadway.
Chapter 10
I slowly pushed myself up off the asphalt; tiny pebbles clung to my face and bit in to my cheeks and bottom lip, causing pinpricks of pain that, at that moment, barely registered in my brain’s pain sensors. I made my way shakily back to my feet and watched wide eyed as my partner smashed through the barricade. I silently prayed that he would make it when I saw the attack helicopter. My heart sank, and the expression on my face went sallow. I started to run in the direction of the barricade when a voice from behind, and a resounding click of a gun’s safety being disengaged, grabbed my attention.
“Stop! don’t make me shoot you!” I heard the Homeland agent state dryly.
“You can’t do this,” I said coming to a halt, worry evident in my voice. I watched in horror as a stinger missile launched from the Apache’s weapons bank. The rocket struck the roadway directly in front of the Specter Armored truck. Its flat black surface illuminated in flame as it flipped end over end and slammed into the newly formed crater, with a deafening crunch. “Fuck!” I screamed in frustration, feeling completely helpless as my partner of ten years was undoubtedly cooked alive inside of the wreckage. No one could have survived that, I thought as my head dropped down in defeat.
A second explosion rocked the area as the armored car’s fuel stores caught fire due to the intense heat. This momentary distraction took the Homeland agent off-guard for a moment, and Richard took that instant to act.
I heard a commotion behind me, sounds of a struggle. I spun around to see Richard locked in contest with the Homeland agent, his hands gripping the soldier’s MP5, forcing it upward, taking me out of the line of fire. I ran forward, balling my hand into a fist and lashed out with all my remaining strength, striking the agent in his face, knocking his head back, stunning him, allowing Richard to wrench the weapon from his hands. I changed tact and thrust an open palm upward striking the agent below his chin, causing him to bite down hard on his tongue, sending flecks of blood skyward.
He stumbled backward and tripped over his own two feet. He fell to the ground hard with a resounding thud.
I pulled my pistol and aimed for his forehead. “Tell me why the fuck I shouldn’t blow your fucking head off!” I spat as he shook his head groggily.
Richard shouldered the MP5 and took up position scanning the area, doing his best to cover our six.
“Make this quick, boss,” Richard said to me over his shoulder.
“Answer me, motherfucker!” I said, taking my finger off the trigger guard.
The Homeland agent held his hand up in a stalling fashion and spat; blood dribbled from over his split lips and ran down his bruised chin. “Thuck,” he said with his newly formed lisp while running his dirt-encrusted arm across his face.
“I’m waiting,” I said, applying about three of the seven necessary pounds of pressure to activate the gun’s trigger. That got the agent’s attention, and he sighed.
“I downt know thwat your asthking of me. I wasth justh following orders,” he said, struggling to form his words with what I could imagine was a split tongue and a broken jaw.
“Then who the hell would know. I need answers. I need to know why my partner had to die for your fucking national security.” I spat the last part as if it were a curse.
The agent leaned up on his elbows and cocked his chin toward the roadblock. I could see the agents that were left in the area scrambling around their SUVs. I heard someone begin to speak over the Homeland agent’s shoulder mic.
“This is Agent Bishop. Target has been eliminated. Evac to rally point for containment measures conformation code echo echo seven five seven nine six,” said the tinny voice of their commander. Then the line went silent, following a slight static burst.
“We were your target? With all this madness going on, we were your fucking target? What for, and what the hell do they mean by containment measures?” I asked with confusion, crossing my hardened features.
“To answer your firsth question, all we were told was your truck may have contained a possible bioweapon, and we were under orders to apprehend you and, if necessary, neutralize you,” he said with some difficulty, but his speech seemed to get marginally better now that the cobwebs of his assault were starting to clear.
“We gotta go, Kyle. We’re starting to draw a crowd,” Richard said nervously, noticing a group of Homeland agents heading in our direction.
“Containment, how, what the hell are they going to do?” Richard grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled.
“We need to go now!” Richard said, trying to pull me along.
“Wait!” I shouted and shouldered him off. Richard screamed in my ear:
“There’s no time,” he said, pointing as agents and crazies alike were starting to swarm in our general direction.
“Fuck!” I shouted. “Fine,” I said. I spat on the downed agent, and we took off at a run in the opposite direction of the incoming hostiles.
I frantically searched the area, looking for a place to escape. I had a dreadful feeling starting in the pit of my stoma
ch, the word containment repeating itself over and over in the forefront of my mind. My thoughts went back to the plane I had seen fly overhead earlier. It had meant nothing at the time, but now it seemed altogether sinister in its appearance. In my experience in the private sector, before I had been cast out to live a normal life, I had seen some of what the government deemed as containment. It typically involved the complete destruction of an area. Usually, biological outbreaks of a critical magnitude burned themselves out due to the speed and virulence they possessed without any human involvement; they simply let nature run its course. Being the government had called for containment measures meant that they had no fucking clue what this was and were freaked out enough to level the area. In this case, I suspected a fuel air bomb judging by the size of the aircraft I had seen do a flyover previously. The bomb would be dropped from the aircraft where it would then bust open, saturating the area in a highly combustible compound that would then ignite at temperatures so hot it would literally suck the oxygen out of the area, creating a vacuum, obliterating everything within its calculated radius. I had no idea how far this thing had spread, but I knew we had to get the hell out of Dodge—and get the hell out fast. I shot a look over my shoulder as we ran to see that the Homeland agents were helping their fallen comrade to his feet. Oddly, they seemed to ignore us completely as they pointed toward the oncoming crazies that approached them.
Agents toward the roadblock boarded their SUVs and started to speed off into the distance. My gaze landed upon the ruins of my armored transport, and I felt a pang of regret enter my mind, knowing that my partner had most likely been killed as a result of my actions. What am I going to tell his wife? I thought. Richard smacked me in the shoulder, tearing my attention away from the wreckage.
“No time to dwell on it right now. Come on, this way.” He pointed at a police cruiser not too far from our position.
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