by Geo Dell
She rolled with the push, and when she came up against the wall she was on her feet once more. The man that had been about to shoot her was gone, the other two were firing at Bear. The shadow behind them was firing at them too. A friend, she questioned, as her own rifle joined the explosion of noise in the hallway.
Neither of the two fired back. They had no time to do so. They crumbled where they had stood. A split second more and she was looking at Bear as he squatted beside her. Boots at floor level strode into view, and she looked up into Billy's worried eyes. He spoke, but she got nothing from it. Muffled static. She started to move forward and Bear stopped her, pointing back the way they had come. She knew why. She nodded and followed him as he made his way back through the dimly lit hallways deeper into the facility, Billy running beside her.
The Nation:
Jessie and Sandy
It was late. Jessie had walked back up with Brad. Brad had left to help Bob with something, and Jessie had found herself sitting with Sandy.
Sandy spoke first. “What have you decided to do, Jessie, if you leave next spring there are a few hundred of us that will go with you. Even Bob and Janna...” Her face was red, and her voice a low whisper. “I feel like I am pressuring you to do something you don't want to do, but you have people that believe in you, and the Fold could grow into something that could rival The Nation. Easily rival the Nation.”
“I know that, Sandy. It isn't that. I.” She stared at Sandy hard. “Between you and me for now.” She thought a second. “You, me, Bob, Brad, Janna a few others. Don't tell anyone that you don't trust. Can you promise me that?”
“I can,” Sandy said. There was relief in her voice. It was obvious to Jessie she had been concerned that maybe Jessie had abandoned her ideas for recognition of the Fold. “I haven't decided to give up. I've decided... I've decided, why give this up? I mean, it was Bob' idea first, wasn't it? Wouldn't Bob have a say so in what it is? How it runs? I want those of us that have been excluded to get together. Have a meeting of our own. I don't want to leave though, Sandy. I want to stay.” She finished and leaned back away from Sandy.
“They will never let you rename it,” Sandy told her quietly.
“I know that. But we won't ask permission, we'll just do it,” Jessie said every bit as quietly. “Bob, Janna, Steve, that is three of their council that are with us, am I wrong?”
“No, they are,” Sandy admitted.
“We have the winter to work it out then, but by next spring I intend for us to be in charge, not them. If anyone leaves it will be them, not us.” Jessie leaned back and looked around the mostly empty cave area.
The plan was coming together in her head. It didn't have to be hard. It didn't have to be complex, it just needed a little push in the right direction. She looked back at Sandy and spoke. “Get the ones you trust together, after the snow fall. We'll all plan an outing, an invited only outing. It doesn't have to be far, just somewhere where we can hash it out. Make sure we're all on the same page.” She hesitated briefly. “Can you do that for me Sandy?”
“Yes... You really think we can take over this place?” She asked.
“I really do,” Jessie said as she rose. “Let me know when you have the meeting ready and we'll all sit down together.” Jessie waited for Sandy's nod and then turned and walked away from the table. She stepped out into the long passage way and began to walk toward the other side of the cave system.
Watertown:
Bear, Beth & Billy
The facility was silent. Bear lead the way to the corridor that held Weston's office, but he was long gone. The desk drawer was empty. They ransacked the office, but it was hard to know where exactly what they were looking for was. Probably with Weston, where ever he was. It was clear that there must be more of the antidote here somewhere in the facility, but where?
“Two floors below,” Bear said as they left the office.
“He told you?” Beth asked. Her hearing was barely there, but there was little noise in the facility to get in the way.
They walked back into the hallway.
“I know he didn't get into that tunnel,” Billy said decisively. “I shot three people there. All in battle fatigues... All young.”
Beth agreed. “I didn't see him either. It looked like those guys were trying to get away too, so it made me think he still had to be back here somewhere calling the shots and they were just...” She shrugged. “Running away, breaking out.”
Bear nodded. “Makes sense.” He looked up and down the hallway. “Has to be that way then. The other way leads out. There is no place else he could have gone.”
A few seconds later they were moving down the corridor, spread out, watching the doors, searching.
Watertown
Pearl
The cave was silent as they approached it, but at first it didn't register for Pearl. Her mind was on Billy, Bear and Beth. She had awakened silent and she had said little: Anna had not pressed her. She was still not well: Her head tended to ache fiercely for no reason sometimes. Her leg wore out after only a little effort: She was jumpy, on edge, so she tended to second guess her intuitions. It had been Anna who had stopped them as they had neared the cave entrance.
Her armed had thumped against Pearl's breast heavily. Pearls rifle was off her shoulder and into her hands before she had any idea what might be wrong. Her eyes scanned the front of the cave and the cliffs above it. Nothing. She looked over at Anna. Anna had dragged her eyes down to the ground with her own. Puddles of water, Pearl saw, and then the truth had come. They were not water, not entirely.
It had rained during the night. She recalled that now as she looked at the puddle before her. Even so this was not rain only. The water moved sluggishly, red glinted from the early morning light and as she watched an object shifted below the surface and turned. A hand, ragged stumps that had once been fingers, one finger remaining, pointing toward the cave entrance like an accusation.
“Jesus,” Pearl said as she sucked in breath. A second later she was moving backwards rapidly with Anna. He head was already pounding. They reached a brushy area near the cliffs that fronted the river and crouched low in the scrub there. Pearl fished a bottle from her pocket, shook out four aspirin and popped them into her mouth. Her head had a pulse of its own. Maybe she had injured her head. Maybe life was just too stressful and she didn't handle it well. Whatever it was, the headaches had been coming and going. Less the last few days. The aspirin would knock it back. She offered the bottle to Anna who shook her head, then returned it to her pocket and buttoned the flap as she watched the cave entrance.
There were tarps that overhung the entrance. Nothing they had erected, but hangings that had already been in place when she and Billy had arrived. Thinking of Billy once more flooded her mind with worry. She pushed it away and bent close to Anna's ear.
“Dead?”
“Dead,” Anna agreed.
At her back the river roared on its way west. In front of her the odor of blood came clearly to her. So strong she was unsure how she had missed it earlier.
Four hand grenades hung at her waist. She had found them in the precinct. She had no idea what kind they were: They could be what Billy had called Flash Bangs, nothing more than a heavy percussion and a lot of smoke and light. Designed to suppress crowds, to frighten, not kill and maim.
On the other hand these did not look like flash bangs, these looked like the read deal. The same sort they had had back in the truck. She had taken them. You never left ammunition or weapons, Billy had told her, and that advice had stuck in her head. There were four at her waist, attached to her belt, she fingered them now, jostling them where they hung. There were three more on Anna's belt. They were all the same, whatever they were.
She looked up to Anna's frightened eyes.
“You can't,” Anna said. “They might be alive in there.”
“Love,” she patted one arm with her free hand. The other held her rifle, aimed at the cave entrance which her eyes continue
d to dart back to every few seconds.
“Anyone inside must be gone... Dead, or as good as dead.”
Anna shrugged her hand away. “I won't do it. I can't.” A second later she was up and running to the cave before Pearl could stop her.
“Hey... Hey, Gina! Hey you guys!” Her rifle was on her shoulder. Her hands swung free. Her body posture was defenseless. She seemed to be completely unaware of the danger she was running to.
Pearl rose from the brush and took several steps toward the cave entrance, but Anna was already far ahead.
She knew the attack would come before it came: When it happened, it happened like this.
She found her rifle had come up of its own accord. Her finger squeezed lightly on the trigger as the barrel rose into her line of sight. Point and shoot, find your target with your eyes, focus on it and your bullets will follow, Billy had told her. She understood that from sports, football, kick while your eyes aimed your body. Something like that. Some rule that her football coach had drilled into her. Mrs Smyth. She had lived in the council flats then and football had taken her away from that life a few times a week.
Her rifle barrel lined up on the opening just over Anna's shoulder when the first dead burst from the shadowed entrance and lunged at her. She was less than three feet from the entrance, yelling as she ran toward it. She tried to lock up her legs when the first of the rotting faces had slipped past the over-hangings and into the sparse morning light, Pearl could see that, but there had been no stopping her momentum. She collided with all three as they sprang from the shadows. Pearl's finger squeezed and the barrel jumped, kicked back, and she dragged it back down as fast as she could, her eye fastened on the dead where they had met Anna in the entryway and were tearing her apart even as her bullets found them.
Anna stood frozen for the briefest of moments. She had collided with the dead and their combined momentum had briefly canceled each other out. She felt the bullets as they passed her, a disturbance of the air, before she heard them. Wasps, she thought, and that was her last thought.
Pearl watched as the rifle stitched a line from left to right. The dead falling, Anna's jacket puffing out, bits of the polyester filling taking flight. She dragged the line of fire back. Halfway through her second hurried pass the clip expired.
She found herself ejecting the clip before she even realized what she was doing. Her legs were planted wide. Her mouth was a grim twisted scar of white. One hand went searching for the new clip and found the grenades again. She continued on to the clip, wrenched it free and then slamming it home, but the remaining dead were gone. Two of them lay on the pavement, heads exploded, the other had crawled away into the darkness beyond the hanging tarps. A few quick movements and the rifle was back on her shoulder, depending from the strap. Her hand wrenched the first grenade free as she ran at the entrance. She skidded to a near stop mere feet from the entrance, collapsing as she did.
Anna was dead. She lay still, a large pool of her blood surrounding her head. Part of her neck ripped away. A few moments before she had been whole, Pearl's mind jabbered. A few seconds ago she had been alive. Pearl shut down the self talk as quickly as it had started. She had fallen to her knees as she skidded to a full stop, tearing the knees from her jeans as she did. Her leg was screaming in protest. She looked down and saw red blooming from the wound in her upper thigh. The wound that had all but healed over.
She reached for a second grenade as tears squirted from her eyes. She bought first one, then the other to her mouth and freed the pins with her teeth, holding the levers down in he fisted hands. She heard the pins as they struck the stone and pinged, leaping back into the air. She reached forward and rolled each grenade under the tarps, listening as they rattled across the stone floor and into the cave: She scrambled to her feet as quickly as she could and began running for the brush near the cliffs.
The explosions came before she was prepared, catching her as she was running, launching her into the air. She felt her feet leave the ground, saw the brush flash by, the river appear below her.
Bluechip
Bear, Beth & Billy
In the end there had been no great trick involved in finding what they needed. They had followed the elevators down the hall and a trail of blood that had lead to them there. Whatever had happened, Weston had not managed to escape unhurt. Two floors below they had found the ruins of Bluechip. Doors smashed, observations rooms open and empty. The power was on, but little was running. Someone had gotten to the main power supply and turned off all the locking systems. They had done it for their own reasons and whatever those reasons had been they played well enough into their own needs.
Lights flickered in the halls as they walked to area. The virus labs were easy to find. It was there that the main thrust of the attack had taken place. A bullet proof glass enclosure had kept those guarding the area safe: Once the locks had gone down that same area had trapped them.
Blood ran from the walls, puddled on the floor between the airlocks. There were less than a half dozen bodies in evidence, others must have managed to escape the area. Bear knew what they were looking for and found it in one of the storage rooms. The small glass vials, and the silver canisters. Row after row filled the shelves. A large section appeared to be missing. Whether it contained the same antidote he did not know, whether it had made it out of the facility, no matter what it was, was likewise questionable. A scattering of documents on the floor. Folders, case studies, Bear saw when he picked them up. Someone had dropped them. Most were marked classified. He found out later that Weston had dropped them when he had been surprised and attacked. He had made it out alive, just, the folders had been dropped in his haste: Left there for anyone to find. All the experiments he had directed. All of his personal files where he had documented the life of the V virus from the start of experimentation on live subjects to disseminating it to the population in its many forms. He knew none of that when he picked it up. He only knew it could be useful to them.
“That it,” Beth asked. Her voice echoed off the yellow tiled walls causing her to start. Her heart slammed into her rib-cage and skipped a beat. She drew a quick breath and blew it out slowly.
“Same stuff he showed me,” Bear said. He looked around at the walls as he spoke. He picked up a plastic bin from a nearby table: Small compartments inside of it, all empty. He handed it to Billy who held it open as Bear filled it with dozens of containers of each of the antidotes. He closed it and billy slipped it into one of his over-sized pockets and closed the flap. Bear sighed.
“I don't know which is which... He never told me, although I'm sure he knew.”
“Doesn't matter,” Billy said. He licked at his lips which suddenly seemed too dry.
Beth met his eyes. “Do you know that?”
Billy nodded. “No, I mean yes, I don't know, but Pearl does. She saw it handled. Didn't tell me, I didn't think to ask, but she's back at the cave, we'll know soon enough.”
Bear nodded. His eyes traveled around the room once more. “Let's go,” he said as they left the room at a fast walk. A few seconds later they were riding the elevators back two levels up.
TEN
November 9th
Pearl
The water swept her quickly downstream toward the west, but it also saved her life. She managed to get to a rocky ledge a half mile down and haul herself from the water. A half hour of climbing, her head pounding, had bought her to the River road once more. She had managed to keep both pistols and one of the grenades. Her rifle, the other grenade, and her canteen of water had been ripped away by the current. When she reached the top she stripped her clothes off, wrung the water from them and hung them on some bushes to dry. She took the time to clean both pistols as she waited. They weren't perfectly dry, but she was sure they would fire if she needed them, and to think she wouldn't need them was dangerous. She knew she would, it was just a matter of when. She sat quietly, cleaned the weapons and then checked herself over.
Her body was a mass of
bruises. Blacks, blues, yellows and everything in between. One shoulder hurt to move. Her thigh was once again weeping blood, split open, red and raw. Her headache was at a dull roar, she could feel each individual pulse beat in her temple. She marveled at it, thankful it wasn't worse than it was. After all, she told herself, she might well be dead as opposed to sitting naked on the grassy verge of the roadway examining her weapons as her clothing dried. The thought made her smile and she allowed the smile to stay for a bit. Billy entered her mind a few moments later and the smile slipped away. She pushed the thought and worry away and went back to cleaning her guns.
The stiff breeze dried her clothes within an hour, she re-dressed and then sat off carefully in the direction of downtown.
The Outrunners
Bear, Beth and Billy had found Pearl later that afternoon. Billy had driven aimlessly through the streets that were cleared, following the routes she might take for supplies. He had seen a shadow by the mouth of an alleyway and slowed the truck a block away, unwilling to get ambushed if it was not her; shot mistakenly if it was her. He and Bear had walked around the block and nearly gotten themselves shot anyway as they approached her. She had returned her pistols to their holsters and sagged back against the alleyway wall as Billy had frozen on the sidewalk.
Billy had sprinted to the alleyway; fallen to his knees and she had collapsed into his arms. Bear and Beth had left them for some time to themselves. When they had come from the alleyway a few long minutes later they had all hugged with emotion, tears unchecked.
They drove the truck out of the city and into the barn where they had left it initially. Bear pulled the doors and they sat in the dim light cast by the holes in the roof, watching dust motes disturbed by the air swirling in the shafts of light: Enjoying the silence for a time.
Billy had begun to work on Pearl, disinfecting her wounds, bandaging her thigh and her head. She dressed in cleans clothes that belonged to Beth. They could pick up others somewhere down the road. The thing that had him worried was the infection that was obvious in her thigh wound. He had gotten some antibiotics in her, and he would keep her on them. She had demolished two bottles of vitamin water and several handfuls of peanuts, but she had eaten nothing else. Billy had let it go. It was a start. The silence came back and held for a few moments before Bear spoke.
