LZR-1143: Redemption

by Bryan James

  I stared in shock as a megaphone followed the array of bullets.

  “If you stupid assholes want to live, get your asses to the end of the line, ASAP.”

  Then, the vehicle drove away.

  I watched Kate stand, and stare at the massive truck as it rumbled away, slowly but surely, away from the Space Needle and off toward the lake. I turned to her, smiling slowly and broadly.

  She didn’t look at me.

  She didn’t need to.

  We had just been saved by an amphibious assault vehicle, circa 1945. And it had a large duck painted on the side.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Once she got over herself, I was able to speak to Kate quietly while we made our way toward the end of the line. Rhodes listened in, nodding occasionally.

  It made sense, and she saw that. But the problem wasn’t that it was a bad plan. It’s that it required some cooperation from people that we didn’t even know yet.

  There was a group of people waiting for us when we reached the convention center, and they were removing the gate in a makeshift fence when we arrived, climbing down from the narrow rails and onto the platform. Distorted metal walls rose to the sides, and I stared up briefly at the imposing figure of the large iconic building to my left. Untouched by the times, it stood still, waiting for another sunrise over the mountains, and another sunset over the sound.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” It was a large woman in a dark shirt and oversized cargo pants, a twelve-gauge shotgun held in one hand and a large key ring in the other. She was surrounded by a motley crew of others, men and women, each with a weapon of some nature, some guns, some blades or clubs. All serious, and all quite nervous.

  “You just about brought hundreds or thousands of those things to our neighborhood. We coulda been killed. We still might, if more of those things show up looking for that noise. Hopefully Eddy and Jorge can get some distance before they hear him running around in that clunker. What the hell you doin’?”

  In her early fifties, her face was worn and serious, bright blue eyes staring at each of us in turn. She wasn’t so much fat as she was large. Nearly six feet tall, and with thick curly hair protruding from under a ball cap with a sports logo, she struck a commanding presence. I figured I wasn’t going to go wrong assuming she was in charge.

  “Listen, we’re sorry about that, but we needed to get from downtown to… well, here for now. We’re heading to the university, and…”

  “The university? You are stupid, aren’t you son. Pretty, but not terribly… Wait a damn minute. You look like… But you can’t be him, he’s…”

  I held up a hand, cutting her off.

  “Yes, I’m him. It’s a really, unbelievably long, and quite frankly, unbelievably unbelievable story. But yes, it’s me. Listen, do you have…”

  Her hard demeanor seemed to melt, her face going from craggy and chiseled, worn by time, to that of a flushed teenager. I hadn’t had this in a while. I didn’t know what to do.

  “Well, holy crap.” She gestured her friends back, clearing a space and backing up, gesturing for us to come in, past the stacked crates and lashed down barrels that made up the barricade. “Y’all move out the way, let Mr. McKnight through, he’s a big star, deserves some space and some respect.” They dissolved before her ministrations, and she ushered us in.

  “Come on, come on. Let’s get in. Gotta seal this back up. You hungry?”

  Kate spoke from behind me, where the woman had shunted her with her large frame as we were herded down the stairs into the darker confines of the large building, but she couldn’t be heard. I looked back helplessly, my hands in the air, as we passed under the gleaming metal walls into a long hallway, then emerged into a cavernous space surrounded by sad looking retail shops, all of which had been converted to makeshift living quarters. While we walked, the woman continued to speak, nervously and rapidly, totally out of character with the aggressiveness she had shown at the gate.

  “It ain’t much, but we’ve done what we can. The key is staying quiet and making runs at night. We go out for supplies when we can, usually wait until after midnight. They don’t see well in the dark, you know?” She was proud of this knowledge.

  “We been here almost the whole time—well, me I been here the whole time, was here when it started, working on the tracks—I’m a—I was—a mechanic, and these folks…Well some of them were here when it started, some trickled in. A few got up on the rails, like y’all came in, but some just walked right on up to the door. Marge and Buddy over there, they were up in the Needle. Escaped that massacre somehow, I still don’t know how.”

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “But… what’s your name?”

  She giggled like a schoolgirl in heat, and her hand came unconsciously to her thick hair, twirling a strand of it around her finger.

  “It’s Justine, Justine Baker.”

  I held out my hand, smiling as widely as I could.

  “Justine, it’s nice to meet you.” She took my hand gently, almost reverently.

  So it was going to be one of those.

  Okay, I could play this game.

  And I already knew what I needed from her.

  “Justine, listen sweetie. My friends and I need to get to the university. I couldn’t help but notice your friends—”

  “That was Eddy,” she said, but I kept going.

  “—had one of those amphibious vehicles. That’s from the tour company, right?”

  She nodded, and bade us to sit down at a small metal table and chair set across from a pita restaurant, which now showed signs of use as a bedroom, with laundry drying from the awning. More people had gathered around, nearly two hundred, unless I missed my guess. I could hear the faint sound of a baby crying in the distance, and a small child yelled something indistinct before being shushed by his mother.

  “Yeah, that’s where Eddy worked before. He still had the keys when he came roaring in here when it all started. He was screaming something fierce, twenty of those things on his tail. Parked his rig right outside. Turns out to have been a good decision. Those things are amazing for what we use ‘em for.”

  “And what’s that?” Kate asked softly, standing behind me. She put her hand on my shoulder unconsciously and I winced, watching Justine’s eyes harden as she looked at Kate.

  “To get supplies, honey,” she said, voice dripping with condescension. “Weren’t you listening? Those things can drive on the water, and those sons ‘a bitches might be able to survive the water, but they don’t swim too good or too fast. We can cross the lake and hit locations further away without a problem, then lose ‘em in the lake on the way back. No one follows us here easily. It’s how we’ve been lucky so far.”

  “So it’s still seaworthy, still able to go on the lake?” Kate asked.

  “I just said so, didn’t I?” She rolled her eyes and looked back at me, as if asking how I put up with it. Kate’s hand tightened on my shoulder and my voice rose slightly in her strong grip.

  “Justine, I’m gonna level with you, okay?” I looked up at the people standing around her, including them in the conversation. “We’re going to ask you all a big favor—a request from one human to another.”

  Her eyes grew serious as I spoke.

  “We’re part of something very important,” I said, raising my voice and talking not just for her, but for the others as well. The others whose survival might depend on the return of their vehicle.

  “Like I told you before, the story is too long to bear repeating. I can’t really explain how I got mixed up in this, or why. I can’t even understand it myself. But I have a job to do now, and that job is at the university. There’s a man there. And that man can use what he finds in my blood to make people immune to this virus.”

  Gasps rose up from the surrounding crowd, and I heard a man say, in a voice not intended to carry, “Bullshit.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, it’s not bullshit. She and I have both received the injection, and we�
�re both immune. But it has… side effects. With it, we get enhanced strength and healing, but we’re going to eventually die from the effects on our hearts. He has to use our blood to determine how to fix those side effects. We have to get to him, or this vaccine is useless, and every person bitten is going to continue to turn into one of those things until there are none of us left.”

  Justine’s eyes were sad, and doubtful. As if she suspected me of lying and was disappointed.

  “How could we possibly ever believe that?” She asked, and heads nodded around her.

  “We have one way to gather food and supplies. We have one connection to maintaining life in this little community. That truck is it. Do you know what that campus looks like? We tried it out a few weeks back—thought they might have all left, and we went looking for food in their cafeteria.” Her eyes were serious and sad.

  “Fifteen people left in the raiding party.” A murmur rose in the crowd behind.

  “Three people came back.”

  Kate spoke after a moment of silence, and I hoped they heard the sincerity in her voice.

  “We know it’s difficult to believe, but we’ve come from Washington, across the country, through infested cities and countryside, just to get to that campus. We’ve already lost one person tonight, and the rest of us might still die trying. But it means that much. We need to get to the campus. Without your help, we… we don’t even know where we’re going.”

  Justine looked at Kate. She was a smart woman. She knew that Kate wasn’t lying.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a community of one.

  “You’re lying,” shouted one man.

  “There couldn’t be a cure for this. It’s the end of the word!”

  “You’re so strong, you can fight your way across!”

  Kate was speaking directly to Justine as I shook my head and stood up. The crowd watched warily as I made my way slowly and purposefully to a slightly raised platform, where I stopped briefly to grab a crowbar that was leaning lazily against an old trashcan near the steps.

  The voices quieted as I stepped up onto the platform, as if collectively wondering what I was going to do.

  “Can you all see me?” I asked, looking around, scanning the crowd for the voices that had been the most critical, hoping that one would speak.

  “We can see you, but that don’t mean we believe you. And throwin’ that crow bar at me isn’t gonna change that.”

  It was a slight man, thick curly black hair atop a month’s worth of beard. A small, scared looking child clung to his leg and he rested his hand softly on her dirty blond hair. A thin woman stood next to him, a baby in her arms.

  I knew these people.

  They weren’t bad.

  They weren’t trying to be difficult.

  They were just scared.

  “I’d like you all to watch. No throwing. Just showing.”

  I took the bar in both hands, feeling the cold, inch-thick steel rod against my palms. A comforting weight.

  “We told you we’re special. That the vaccine allows us certain… abilities, like strength.”

  I pressed against the steel bar with both hands and I felt it give, stubbornly. I pushed it against itself until the tips met, listening to the gasps from the crowd.

  “We told you that we heal faster than normal.”

  I pulled off the gauntlet on my left hand.

  I activated the blade in my right arm, and slowly plunged the thin metal into the palm of my hand, until it emerged from the other side. Grimacing in pain, I cursed as I withdrew the blade and pulled it back out. I shook the hand several times, and wiped the palm against my pants.

  Then I held it up.

  More gasps and then silence.

  “You see? We’re not lying to you,” Kate said softly, standing up and joining me. “We just need help. We just need a little push, to get us the rest of the way. Then we can take the first step to ending all of this.”

  A hush fell over the assembled people, and I pulled the gauntlet back over my hand, feeling the rough fabric over the tender skin of my palm. It may heal quickly, but it didn’t tickle.

  Justine stood up, walking toward us both.

  I took a breath, realizing that without their help—without a guide and without the quick trip across the lake that their machine could offer—we would be in trouble. At best, it would take much longer. At worst, we would fail, or we would take so long that SeaTac would simply cease to exist—either because of evacuation or worse.

  “We’ve pulled through a lot here,” said the large woman, her voice carrying in the large space. “We’ve come through death, and hunger, and darkness. We’ve seen our loved ones die, and we’ve huddled together in silence and in fear, shaking in the corners as we waited for them,” she inflected the word so that there was no question to whom she referred, “to pass by. We have come through too much together for me to make this decision on my own.”

  She turned to me, eyes dark and expressionless, brow furrowed slightly. She stared for more than ten seconds, and I began to think of ways to get to the university. Ways to make it in time, without a guide.

  Suddenly, she threw out her hand and I reflexively met it with my own. Her strong, calloused grip was like iron, and I smiled at the ferocity of her actions. She smiled back.

  “But you got my vote, son.” Her eyes softened slightly. “Besides, I always did like your flicks.”

  Kate smiled briefly, then scanned the crowd. Slowly, a thin man in a hoodie stepped forward and nodded. Then, a large man in a flannel jacket, his eyes heavy with weariness and his face haggard. A woman still wearing her police uniform. A man with a t-shirt that said “MILF Hunter.” A small boy, holding the hand of his grandmother, her gray, thinning hair held back by a thin red ribbon.

  Finally, the slightly built man who had been so vocal before stood alone, his small child and wife held close. I stepped forward.

  “I don’t think I need your vote, friend. But I want it. I want to know that I’m working for something. That some semblance of humanity—some semblance of order can still take hold. I want you to believe in me. I want you to believe that we can be human again. That this,” I gestured around me, taking in the refuse in the corners, the hanging laundry that still smelled moldy, the tired people.

  “That this,” I repeated, “is all temporary. Just a blip on the radar screen of humanity. I want to believe that we’re working together. For something. Not just against those things. But for ourselves.”

  He looked down at his wife, and back up at me. Behind me, someone coughed and a child spoke, and was hushed quickly.

  “Mister, I’ve never seen your movies. If you were a big star, then congratulations. But I wasn’t much impressed by your trick there.” He lifted his head proudly and ran his hand through his hair.

  “But what you said just now—not even what, but how—that reminded me of a man I knew in Iraq. Good man. He always told us to fight for something bigger than ourselves. To fight for what was right, and not to hold back in the face of something scary. Well, I reckon what’s out there right now’s as scary as shit gets. And I’m gonna remember what he said. You got my vote. And you got my rifle.”

  He stepped forward.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “I’m telling you, I barely made it out with my life this time. They are stirred up something awful out there, and they’re all coming south. I don’t know why, but it’s crazy out there. Hell no is my answer, and you can suck on it.”

  Eddy was a tall, cadaverous looking man, with sunken cheeks and an even lower demeanor. Gruff and frowning, I found it hard to believe he had ever been a tour guide. Of course, the end of the world has a certain effect on people.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” said the smaller man, Jorge, whose thin black beard framed a young face over a tank top and formerly designer jeans. His voice was rapid, but measured. “They were everywhere. We tried three different streets before we found one with none of those things on it. All coming south, towar
d us and toward the city.” He tore into a small package of crackers. The kind I used to ignore when they served them with clam chowder or soup. Now, they were served to the conquering heroes like gold and virgins.

  “And you? So stupid that you pull ‘em on to you and make us divert from our last run to save your asses?” His voice was annoyed and cantankerous, and Jorge grunted once, whether in agreement or just enjoyment of his food, I couldn’t tell.

  “Technically, we weren’t in any danger…” I began, and his eyes narrowed, until Justine intervened.

  “Eddy, you do talk, don’t you,” said Justine, slapping his back congenially. “Now Carl here,” she waved at the man who had been the last to join with us, “said he’d go with y’all, and you just gotta make one more run. It’s an easy one. Into the water real quick, drop off, then home. Just gotta get from here into the water and across the pond.”

  “You know them bastards swimmin’ now?” asked Eddy, making another play at refusing the powerful woman. She had already nearly told the man what he’d be doing. She just had to convince him to comply.

  “Uh, technically they’re not swimming,” said Ky from where she sat on the floor, bouncing a cracked tennis ball to Romeo as Rhodes leaned casually against the railing, staring at the children playing together below.

  “What?”

  “The zombies. They’re not swimming. They’re… well, they’re walking I guess. Or floating. But they’re not coordinated enough for swimming.”

  The ball bounced once before the dog grabbed it from the air, splashing those around him with drool thicker than maple syrup.

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Because we’ve seen it,” said Kate. “We’ve seen everything these things do, and we know them well enough to know we need help across the lake to finish this.” She leaned over, locking big brown eyes with the older man. She had untied her hair from the ponytail behind her head, and her thick hair framed her face as she stared at the man. Her eyes were like agates, hard and sharp.