Ms. Jones smiled and carefully set her cigarette down in the ashtray. She opened the top drawer of her desk and removed a small medical kit. She got up, walked over to the door, and closed it. Phoenix heard a small, familiar click. “Dr. Carson says he knows nothing of the virus and says he can’t fix this,” she said. “And I get a call that says you are immune to this thing and that the cure is in your blood. What do you want me to do?”
“Take a sample,” Phoenix said. “You won’t find anything. Take what you need, run it to wherever your lab is, and check it. Then, if you don’t mind, I’d like my phone back and my freedom.”
Ms. Jones opened the medical kit. She smiled at Phoenix and reached into it, pulling out a syringe filled with a light blue, clear liquid.
Phoenix began to feel the true emptiness of this place. He couldn’t hear anything, not a sound, outside Ms. Jones’ office. The shuffling of papers, which he noticed earlier, and the chatter of the Black Ops guys and Victoria, had vanished.
The sound of Bobbie Jones giggling was all he could hear; and he watched her hold the Psyke-filled syringe up to the light and squeeze off a little of the blue juice.
“I don’t want you completely out of it, sweetheart,” she said smiling. “I want to leave you alert so that you’ll enjoy me like you always did and remember it. I don’t like to be alone – you know that, right?”
“Don’t do this, Bobbie – I mean it,” Phoenix protested.
“I’m going to give you this little blue shot, then I’m going to walk you over to the couch, remove your handcuffs, and the rest of the day will be ours. You’ll sleep for a few hours afterwards, I’ll have a cigarette, and, when you awake, you’ll remember everything. After that, I’ll move you down to the first floor where you’ll join Dr. Carson. In the morning, we go down to the lab and take most of your blood.”
“Most of my blood?”
“Unfortunately,” Ms. Jones said. “Which is why you and I had better get our little business out of the way. After they’re done with you, Viagra won’t have anything left to work on.”
Chapter 26
Alaia Jenkins lay in her coffin, indecisive and apprehensive after her call from Phoenix. She knew she needed to start moving, get out of her death box, and clear the room of any remaining infected persons. Only then would she be able to get Darkeem and the others away from the funeral home and to safety, if any safe place still existed.
The sounds of scuffling and moaning had stopped less than a minute earlier. Either the Psykotics had gone dormant, if that was possible, or they had left the room. The lack of noise didn’t make her feel any better. Instead, it made her worry even more, and the increased tension of the moment, body-shaking and sweat-inducing, pounded inside her, pleading for release.
But she hesitated. For all she knew a Psyked person, ripe and juicy like a squashed berry, was standing beside her coffin, scanning the room for a victim, waiting for the least squeak of a hinge. The moment she moved, he’d be all over her like her first date in the back seat of her first Buick.
All Alaia had in the coffin with her was her pistol. Her shotgun she’d laid under the coffin before Phoenix had closed her inside. She regretted leaving it the moment the coffin lid came down; and she found herself wishing she had Phoenix’s silenced Glock so that she could do the dirty work quietly, like he had been doing.
Alaia moved on autopilot, and she lifted the lid slowly and raised her head. She looked out. Nothing moved in the room – not a body, not a shadow. She lifted the lid to the fully-opened position, quickly, like a frightened kid at bedtime throwing her blankets back, and she climbed out. She holstered her pistol, and slung her pack over her shoulders. She bent down and grabbed the shotgun, careful to watch the exit and the door to the hall.
Darkeem’s lid was partly open already. He saw his mother coming and he pushed it up and away, climbing out as fast as he’d jumped into it a short time earlier.
Alaia walked over to where the other women were hiding and tapped on the lids with the barrel of her shotgun. The two women, shaken, gladly removed themselves from their dark tombs.
“I have to go after Phoenix,” Alaia said. She hit the home button on her phone and checked the GPS Phoenix had sent. “Elm Hill Pike General Hospital. That’s doable – but I ain’t walking.”
Beth thanked Alaia. “If it’s all the same, Alaia, we’d rather come with you.”
“If you can shoot, then I have no problem with that,” Alaia said. “So gear up.”
“We have all we need right here,” Beth said. She walked towards the corner of the coffin display room and lifted the lids to three coffins. “Packs, food – lots of it – weapons, and a casket full of black powder.”
Alaia’s eyes and ears perked when she heard Beth mention the black powder. “What? You girls knocked over a gun shop?”
“If I answer that, will I go to jail?” Beth asked.
“Fine – I don’t want to know,” Alaia said.
“And all four of us – we worked for TVA,” Beth said.
Alaia curled her lip and stood there tapping her foot, if not in actuality, then mentally, waiting for the next relevant line.
“We took a small box of dynamite when we left,” Beth said. “We just thought it would be a good idea, though none of us never used any before. Is having dynamite illegal?”
Alaia rolled her eyes. “Everyone for miles around, up to and including the half million people who live in Nashville, is probably gone or deadish, and you’re asking me if having dynamite is illegal?”
“Just eight sticks, that’s all – misdemeanor, right?”
“If you have keys to that van outside, I’ll look the other way, okay?”
Beth pulled a keychain out of the pocket of her painted-on capris and dangled them in Alaia’s face, smiling.
“Alright, then – load up,” Alaia said. “But there are more of those things out there, so I’ll keep an eye out while the rest of you carry this stuff out – but we don’t need all those guns. Take a pistol and a rifle and the bullets, but leave the rest.”
The idea of driving through Nashville didn’t have quite the appeal to Alaia once she started mulling it over in her mind. There was no question about going. But Nashville had been overrun – that’s what she and Phoenix had heard – and she shivered to think of what would happen if the van got hung up in a Bonnaroo-like crowd, a crowd full of empty-minded, would-be killers strung out on Psyke looking for a fast Frito-Lay after a bong party. She didn’t bother sharing her concerns with the others. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them until they found themselves hopelessly tangled up in it. Phoenix had made it – but he’d also had a security detail jacked up on steroids along for the ride.
The van was being loaded up. More infected were coming. When the virus-stricken stepped from the grass onto the asphalt, Alaia would have to kill them. Then there’d probably be more behind them who’d follow the sounds of gunfire.
She raised her shotgun when they came for the van, and with the precision of a shotgun surgeon, she prayed and sprayed. Three shots later, in a hail of double-aught buck, three heads disintegrated in splashes the size of large watermelons being dropped from a three story building.
“Time!” Alaia yelled.
Beth hurried by with the last item, the box of dynamite, and she carried it as securely as a woman holding a new born. Darkeem was already in the front passenger’s seat. The other woman, a slightly overweight thirty-something with perfect nails, a denim jumper, and white tennis shoes, climbed into one of the back seats.
“Beth!” Alaia called. “I want that stuff where you can reach it – on the floor, right between your two feet, you got that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Beth said.
“Do I look like a ma’am to you?” Alaia said.
More than a handful of almost-dead stepped into the picture, barely visible against the background of trees just over the crest of the hill. Alaia stopped what she was doing and looked. Watching the Psyke
Junkies come towards her was like watching a baby learning to walk, only babies learned much more slowly and over a period of months. But these guys seemed to have picked up some speed between yesterday and today.
When the infected chick leading the pack shook her shoulders, like someone dancing to avoid being stung by wasps, and when she raised her head and paused, looking at Alaia through ruby-blooded eyes, Alaia knew it was time to leave.
When the Psyke-jacked woman came for her, at a clip faster than even she could run, Alaia raised her shotgun and cut her in half at the knees with a double blast of ball bearings. The woman hit the ground and started screaming, a scream sounding more like rage and anger than pain. Her deadish friends, seeming to be animated by the scream, twitched; and they came towards Alaia, running and screaming.
“Any day now,” Alaia told herself. She raised her weapon and fired off two more blasts, the fire from the barrel of her Saiga throwing two sheets of flame into the faces of two of her attackers. She turned and climbed into the van, locking the door behind her.
The Psykotics reached the van seconds after the door slammed into place. Alaia inserted the key into the ignition and she heard a click, bright and snappy. She looked out through her window. One of the Psykos, his upper body smeared with dark, crusty blood, had his hand on the door handle, flipping it up and down like a bored child flipping the change return box on a soda machine.
The van started in a cloud of black, greasy diesel smoke. Alaia put the van into reverse and backed out of the parking space. She drove through the parking lot and came to the crest of the hill where the driveway meandered down towards the main road. She stopped just before the descent.
Beth, sitting just behind Alaia, drew a deep breath and leaned forward, putting her hand on Alaia’s shoulder. “Are we sure we want to go that way?”
Alaia jumped. “Don’t you go touching me like that, unless you wanna get shot, girl. You hear me? Now, I ain’t playing with you. And which way do you want to go? Over the river and through the woods?”
“What happens if---?”
“There ain’t gonna be no ‘what if’,” Alaia said, her voice shaky and doubtful. “I don’t know how we’re gonna do this – but we’re gonna do it.”
Everybody in the van stared out through the windshield. At the bottom of the hill, where the driveway ran through a thin band of tall hickory and oak and intersected the main road, hundreds of people, if that’s what they were, were bunched up like fans around a country music star at Fan Fair.
“Do you know what happens when you run over these things?” Beth asked. “It’s like trying to drive over a rotten log half-buried in wet, muddy grass.”
Alaia, with a miffed look on her face, turned to Beth. “And what does that mean in laymen’s terms?”
“It means you get stuck until the mud dries,” Beth said impatiently. “What did you think I meant?”
“Can you drive this thing?” Alaia asked.
“I know how to drive.” Beth said.
Alaia looked up at the ceiling of the van. “I mean I need you to drive – are you good with that?”
“What are you going to do?”
The driveway ahead of them, which came up the hill in a large, winding, bent, hairpin-shaped curve, looked clear except for a few mindless Psykes caught in fallen tree limbs and in the hydrangea plantings. They’d have come for the van if they’d been able to free themselves, just like the ones that had come for the van before it left the parking space.
Alaia drove the van forward, inch by inch, honking the horn in varying patterns. She looked into the rearview mirror. The small herd from up top seemed content to follow at a slower pace, and Alaia left them behind. Some of the near-dead at the bottom of the drive turned to look as she laid on the horn.
“I guess we could use some of the powder and dynamite,” Beth said.
“Hand me a can of that powder and a stick of dynamite,” Alaia said. “And you do have a lighter, right?”
“I don’t smoke,” Beth said.
“You will when I light you on fire,” Alaia shot back. “I ain’t asking you for a cigarette, now am I?”
Darkeem said, “Hey!” He leaned over and pushed in the cigarette lighter and shook his head.
Beth opened the container that held the sticks of dynamite. Her friend quickly released her seat belt and climbed into the back of the van, squeezing past the seats and the sliding door opposite Beth. She picked up one of six, five-pound cans of black powder and handed it to Beth, who took it and set it on the floor next to the sliding door on her side.
“Time for you to drive,” Alaia said, and she and Beth played a game of Twister in between the first rear seat and the space in between the two front seats.
Beth drove slowly down the driveway, slowing even more as the van bumped its way over roots growing just under the asphalt. The van neared the hairpin curve.
“Just after the curve, stop,” Alaia said.
Beth did as Alaia asked. She put the van in park and shut down the engine.
Alaia looked at her. “Did I just tell you to turn the van off?”
Beth shook her head and started the engine.
“Now, I’m gonna put this thing out in front of the car about fifty yards and start calling those people down at the road. Once they start coming, you be ready, you hear me?”
Beth nodded.
Alaia opened the sliding door and stepped out. She grabbed the can of black powder and the stick of dynamite. She looked over at Darkeem. “Is that cigarette lighter ready?”
“Have you heard it pop yet?” Darkeem said.
Alaia looked back up the driveway. “It’s gonna have to do.”
Darkeem popped the lighter out of the dash and handed it to his mother. “You’re going to have make it fast or its going to go out.”
Alaia started down the slope as quickly as she could without slipping in the grass. She ran as she went, waving her hand above her, whistling, shouting, hooting, and jumping in the air.
The Psykotics, all piled up at the end of the driveway, turned and saw her. Alaia couldn’t count them, but most of them started twitching like Michael Jackson doing Thriller, and they came up the hill after her. Some of them could really move, and with great speed; but the ascent played to Alaia’s advantage.
Alaia set the five pound can down on the ground and touched the fuse of the dynamite stick to the lighter. The fuse hesitated at first, but then it sputtered and sparked to life, burning a bit faster than she had hoped it would. She set the stick down on top of the can, balancing it so it wouldn’t roll off. She turned and ran.
The Psykos back up the hill, the ones she’d met earlier, started to hurry in her direction. Alaia hadn’t counted on them making better time than she, but the fear inside her worked like nitro, exploding in her legs with a hot burn.
The other woman had the van door ready and open, and Alaia made for it. Once inside, Alaia pulled the door closed. Beth hit the gas.
“Stop!” Alaia screamed. “What the … I know you aren’t driving us closer to that---”
The dynamite exploded, igniting the five pound can of black powder beneath it in a brilliant and horrific flash of blinding white light. The van rocked and shook, and the front wind shield, though it held together, shattered in between its inner and outer safety coatings. Bits and pieces of human flesh, red and Jell-O-like, some of it brown and pasty, landed on the roof and hood and hit the windows, coating the van with blobs of crimson and showering everything in a fine red mist.
“Hit it, now!” Alaia shouted, and Beth stepped on the gas.
The van thumped and skidded all the way to the bottom of the hill. Beth stopped, hit the wipers, and then turned right.
Chapter 27
It was late in the afternoon. Any attempt to drive straight up to Elm Hill General Hospital in a blood-covered funeral home van seemed undoable.
Nashville’s streets were packed. Infected congregated in large masses, masses larger than most of Nash
ville’s biggest churches could boast on a Sunday morning even when a big-name country star was headlining. And now, straight out of the northeast, a stiff wind, something cold like you’d expect from Valhalla, promised a cold and shivery night.
Alaia couldn’t think of anything worse than being cold and scared except being cold, scared, and wet. Did you shiver because you were cold, or did you shiver because you were frightened? Or did you just shiver and pretend you were cold to fool everyone into thinking there was really nothing to be scared about?
And where at Elm Hill General would the CDC keep Phoenix? A week ago, Alaia would’ve just left him there to rot – leave him to whoever it was that had taken him. She’d just drive the van to Franklin, just she and Darkeem, to Dr. Carson Research Lab. She’d drive up to the lab, bang on the doors with her rifle butt, make a helpless face, and somebody would answer. The gun wouldn’t matter, probably. After all, people on the streets needed to protect themselves, right? But she’d drop the gun, they’d let her in, and they’d do whatever scientists do during times like these.
“Don’t miss this turn coming up,” Alaia said. “You see it? Right?”
“You mean Calderon Industries?” Beth asked.
“Why do I keep hearing an echo? Yes, Calderon Industries.”
Beth put on her blinker and pulled into the driveway, taking one bite out of two handicap parking spaces. She noticed her error with a grimace, put the van in reverse, and backed up. She parked the van in a regular parking space.
“And now we’re farther from the door,” Alaia said. “And now we’re going to have to---”
Beth snapped her fingers in Alaia’s face and shook her finger. “Can it, okay? You asked me to drive and I’m driving. If you don’t like it, you drive.”
Alaia smiled coldly.
“Mom,” Darkeem said. “You need to relax.”
Beth smiled politically. “We go in, hang out for a while, and we come up with a plan for getting Detective Malone out of the hospital,” she said. “The parking lot is empty except for a few of those things, so that means everybody who works here is gone and they probably locked the doors behind them. You picked as good a place as any, so---”
Time Clock Hero Page 19
