This new corpse’s radiation joins the others’ in a throbbing steam rising into the sky. No, it’s not her imagination. The light is rising.
Rachel becomes aware again of Bonnie weeping, and she turns to face her. Bonnie reaches a trembling hand to Rachel’s face, touching her cheek, and the fingers come away wet. Rachel wipes at her tears, tears she hasn’t realized she has been shedding.
She looks back at the red scene and cranes her neck to look toward the sky. There’s an indistinct crimson throb up there, roiling amidst low-hanging clouds, but most of the phenomenon seems to be taking place farther west, in the foothills and beyond.
Joel and Bonnie are also staring out the window, transfixed. Rachel glances back through the rear window to see the grill of Kevin’s truck right behind them. She can barely see the occupants of the cab, sitting still, staring north into the park.
“I’ll be damned if I—” Joel starts, then gives up, letting his hands fall from the steering wheel to his lap.
There’s a sharp crack in the near distance. They peer among the trees, searching for the source.
“That’s a firearm,” he says. “Maybe two or three of them. Listen.” He cocks his head, bringing his index finger to his lips for them to remain quiet.
The shots come intermittently, at different pitches. Then there’s a brief barrage of reports, silence for a long minute, and the shots resume at a more measured pace. They’re getting closer.
“There,” Joel says, gesturing.
Rachel sees a small flash of yellow fire before she hears the shot, and it’s followed by what she believes to be the gasp-screeching of one of the corpses. She tries squinting to make out movement in the red mist, and finally she can barely see two figures, maybe two hundred yards away.
Joel is leaning into the passenger seat to peer through the window into the park, his gaze unwavering. “Yeah, I think I know them. I think it’s the Thompson brothers. They live out on LaPorte. Massive gun collection between the three of them. They’ve probably been waiting their whole lives for an opportunity like this. How lucky for us that O-negative blood flows through their veins.”
“The Most Dangerous Game,” Bonnie whispers.
Rachel says, “What?”
“Man is the most dangerous game,” she answers. “It’s an old movie. About hunting humans for sport.”
“Except these things aren’t human anymore,” Joel reminds her.
“So they’re just wandering around, shooting the—”
“Appears so.”
After about five minutes, Rachel can see movement off to the northeast, two figures in camo gear moving steadily toward them. Their weapons are still firing intermittently, and by now she’s sure the men are shooting at the corpses. She can hear the gasping breaths of the things as their reanimation comes to an end. She leans her head out the open window to get a better look. The two men are in an open space, only occasionally visible between the trees and the conglomerations of corpses. Now she can barely see one of the figures aiming his rifle, flash, and an almost immediate crack. A single corpse falls away from its tree, tumbling down the pile and out of Rachel’s line of sight.
One of the men calls out something unintelligible, like some kind of self-congratulatory whoop. The sound is a hollow note in the alien void.
“Yeah, it’s them,” Joel breathes. “Two of them, anyway.”
Suddenly there’s a face at Joel’s window, and Rachel nearly screams. Everyone jumps, then immediately relaxes when they recognize Kevin’s broad face.
“Sorry,” Kevin says.
“Jesus Christ,” Joel whispers.
“Won’t be long before we’ll be in range of those assholes.”
“Just want ’em to get closer so I can talk to ’em.”
Kevin nods wearily. “Doesn’t surprise me seeing shit like this.”
Joel seems to consider that, gives a half nod. “They’re okay.”
Kevin notices Rachel for the first time. “You’re awake.”
She can only glance down, feeling a strange embarrassment.
Kevin opens his mouth again to speak, only to be interrupted by the shouting of the men in the distance.
All four of them turn their heads in that direction, just in time to see a bright flash and chaos of flying bodies and limbs, followed by a concussive blast. The two men are some distance from the explosion, and Rachel knows that they have caused it. She can see their faces a little more clearly in the dwindling fire, and their expressions seem almost exuberant. They have their weapons clamped to their sides, their fingers pressed to their ears.
The blast echoes away like diminishing thunder, and Joel curses. “That was a grenade!”
He reaches down to flip on the light bar atop the cruiser and grabs the microphone of his loudspeaker. Kevin moves out of the way, and Joel gets out of the cruiser, radio mic in hand. He steps away from the flashing light bar and stares over his cruiser’s hood into the park. After a squawk of feedback, Joel’s voice bursts into the park.
“Jeff and Pete Thompson, this is Officer Joel Reynolds.” He clicks off the transmitter and stares into the distance.
The men stare dumbly back, then regard each other with something akin to red-handed guilt.
Joel puts the microphone to his mouth again. “Come on over here, boys, just want to have a few words with you. Secure those weapons.”
Rachel is watching the mass of corpses for any reaction to Joel’s booming voice. There is none.
“If they run,” Kevin says, “there’s nothing we can do, really.”
“They’ll come.”
Sure enough, without much hesitation at all, the brothers begin a wary trudge toward the cruiser, while a cloud of red mist and smoke settles over the scene of the grenade blast. In the dimness, she barely makes out a battlefield of body parts and a single broad tree trunk mostly emptied of corpses. On the periphery of the scene, several corpses attempt to regain their crablike postures but fail because of broken or missing limbs. They are screeching in animal pain and perhaps anger, making Rachel moan.
The brothers approach and seem to grow more massive with each step. These are large men, and they look increasingly ridiculous to Rachel in their tent-like camouflage and big boots. Seeing them this way, she feels more emboldened and finally scoots over to the open window to face them.
“Officer Reynolds,” one of the brothers murmurs in greeting.
“Having fun, are ya, Pete?”
“I, uh, I guess you’ve seen what these things have been doing,” Pete says.
“We’ve seen, yeah.”
“I never woulda thought it would end like this,” says the other man, whose name must be Jeff. “I mean, look at those fuckers! Oh, sorry, ladies.”
Rachel speaks up. “You plan to destroy every last one of them?”
“Well, little lady,” Pete says, “we figure that’s why we’re still here, to clean up the mess. Right, bro?”
Jeff is silent for a moment, taking in the survivors’ makeshift caravan. “Where you all coming from?”
“We were at the hospital during the worst of it,” Joel says. “When they started … coming back.”
“Ain’t no ‘coming back’ to it, Officer,” says Pete. “These things are something else. Jeff here figures they’re aliens, like alien brains inside the dead bodies.”
“Yeah, they ain’t zombies exactly, like in the movies, but more like some kind of alien possession. It’s the God’s honest truth that you gotta kill these things in the head. Only way to kill ’em dead is to get ’em in the head. Or blow ’em up.”
“I guess there’s more to your arsenal than I know about.”
The brothers look sheepish for a moment, but then a little defiant behind their stained-tooth smiles.
“Doesn’t really matter now, does it?” Jeff asks with a smile.
“Guess not.”
Joel looks beyond them into the busy dimness of City Park. The thousands of corpses continue to work at the
trees with their mouths, hungrily, messily. A look of distaste crosses his features, then he focuses back on the brothers.
“You boys have any idea what the hell they’re doing?”
“Hell if I know, man,” Pete says. “Whatever it is, it’s disgusting. It’s unnatural.” His brother is nodding. “It ain’t God’s plan, that’s for damn sure.”
“So,” Rachel says, “the plan is to kill them now and ask questions later?”
She’s acutely aware of the hypocrisy in these words, having recently killed the trapped family in the van. She can feel the eyes of her fellow survivors on her.
“In the head,” Jeff repeats.
“Those things’ll come after you, though, you’re not careful,” Pete adds. “You hit the wrong spot or make too much of a ruckus, they’ll try to kill the fuck out of you. Like, from the inside. Look here.”
He sets his rifle against the cruiser and rolls up his sleeve. The skin of his left arm is pale and burned. Rachel is all too familiar with the sight.
“They’ll fuckin’ hurt you without even biting or anything. Sorry for the language, ladies. They’ll just get close to you and do this shit.”
“Best thing to do,” Jeff adds, “is set ’em on fire. We sprayed gas over one bunch of ’em and lit ’em up. That works, man. But it spread pretty easily to another tree. We don’t want to burn up the world, right? And the screaming is pretty horrible.”
Pete is flexing his fingers, but they’re slow and trembling. “It’s all numb and shit.”
“Yeah,” Joel says, looking at the hand. “We saw a lot of that at the hospital. So, is that really the plan, boys? Just wander around and kill as many of these things as possible?”
The brothers shift their feet and glance around, at each other and out into the red darkness.
“Um, well, yeah?” Pete says.
“What we need,” Jeff cuts in, “is bigger guns. This shit is happening everywhere there’s trees. Hell, look at the foothills. That’s where most of the people are.”
“What?” Kevin says over the hood of the cruiser. “How do you know that?”
“You know Mike Richards up in Laporte, don’t you?” Pete directs to Joel. “He survived.” For the benefit of the others, he says, “Mike runs the Rod and Gun Club. He’s got three or four citizens holed up in a cabin up there on the edge of the forest. Unbelievable sight, he says.”
“How are you communicating with him?”
“Ham radio back home,” Jeff says. “CB in the truck hasn’t worked for shit. Most of the channels are dark, and the radius of our transmitter sucks.”
“The police band is working,” Joel says. “I’ve got an officer down on Harmony organizing a group, but I haven’t heard anything from him in an hour or so.”
“I think we’ve heard some of that, yeah,” Pete admits.
Joel murmurs a laugh. “Hearing anything else?”
“I think there’s some groups out there trying to organize,” says Jeff. “We catch bits of conversations. And there’s some others holed up in their homes. Scared as fuck. Sorry, ladies.”
Joel is quiet for a long moment, considering these revelations. He stares off into the distance. Even from her vantage point inside the car, Rachel can see that his eyes are deadened. She watches the side of his face, feeling her own soul-crushing weariness return. It descends upon her like a great weight. She falls heavily backward from the dash, against the hard plastic of her seat.
“Okay, guys,” she hears Joel say. “I’m not gonna stop you. Do what you have to do. I’d tell you to be careful, but under the circumstances ...”
“We have a system,” Pete says. “One of us is always ready and waiting to take down the mad ones. They just don’t stay pissed-off very long.”
All of these words come at Rachel muffled, as if from underwater. She glances over at Bonnie, finds her looking in the opposite direction through her own open window, toward the row of dark houses, longing for the cozy realities of a too-recent past.
Rachel can’t even muster the strength to reach over and comfort her friend.
“We’re gonna keep moving,” says Pete, “try to gather up some people to help us. We’ve got plenty of weapons. We’ll try to arm up some more at Active Arms. We already cleaned up at Rocky Mountain Shooters.”
“That makes me all warm inside,” Joel says. “But listen, I can trust you boys to … I don’t know, remain sane? You can do that, right? Stay sane?”
“Yes we can, Officer.”
“Let’s try to stay in touch over the CB.”
“We’re using channel 17.”
“You got it. Oh, and hey…” He turns back toward Rachel. “We’ve got some blood bags here. Back at the hospital, we found out that the common denominator among survivors is that we’re all type O-negative blood. Make of that what you will, but we also found that those things don’t like it. It stings the hell out of them.”
Rachel stares down at the bags of blood on the seat, some of them having fallen down near her feet. There are probably a dozen units, and next to Bonnie’s thigh lay three sealed, disposable syringes. Rachel stares at them for a long moment, then lifts her gaze to Bonnie’s face. She’s still staring motionlessly out the window.
“I don’t know,” says Jeff. “I think what we’ve got will do more damage.” He’s holding a grenade in his fist, showing it to them. Rachel can see the lower half of his bearded face; there’s a toothy smile there. “Why don’t you keep that stuff for yourself?”
Joel is nodding. “Might be worth spreading the word, huh? Do what you can.”
“You got it. Be careful, y’all!” Pete calls.
The brothers give identical tips of their hunting caps and wander back off into the hungry morgue that is City Park. The sight of the large men wandering into that surreal landscape should have filled Rachel with some kind of dull fear—she can feel her heart slow-thudding with that kind of reaction—but she honestly can’t summon the energy for even that. There’s a hollowness surrounding everything, an emptiness that pulls at her insides.
Rachel realizes with a perfect void of emotion that she doesn’t have anything left.
She suddenly feels claustrophobic in the confines the cruiser’s rear seat; a prisoner in the back of a cop car. She’s more aware than ever of the proximity of her home, of Tony’s home. She can’t even entertain the thought that he might be lost in this mob of ruined humanity.
Joel and Kevin are talking outside the open window, but Rachel ignores them.
Her hands begin moving almost unconsciously. She finds the backpack at her feet, which already contains two boxes of shotgun shells, and pulls it up into her lap. It also has half a dozen units of O-negative blood stuffed inside it, along with a few of the vacuum-sealed syringe packs and an assortment of medical supplies, including bandages. She quietly zips it up, then feels the barrel of the shotgun between her knees.
“Bonnie?” she whispers, her voice wary.
Bonnie stirs from her exhausted reverie and turns to face Rachel, attempting but failing a smile. “Mm-hmm?”
“I need to go.” The words come out sadly, barely making their way past her throat.
“What?”
“I want to go home.”
“But—there’s no one there, honey,” Bonnie says, growing alarmed.
“I want to go back for my dad, and I want to go home.”
“Wait, what?” Joel says from the front.
Rachel reaches through her open window to open her door, then steps out to the curb with her pack. She slides out, feeling Bonnie’s hand trying to hold her back.
“Whoa whoa whoa,” Joel says. “What are you doing?”
“She wants to leave!” Bonnie screeches.
“My house is two blocks that way,” she says, gesturing northeast. “I just want to be alone now. I want to go home.”
“It’s still dangerous out there!”
“No, it’s not,” Rachel says miserably. “If you leave them alone, they jus
t do their thing. We thought they wanted to kill everyone, and they almost did. I think the way they figured it, they destroyed everyone when this first happened. But somehow, a few of us survived. They didn’t expect that. And we didn’t understand what they were. What they wanted.”
Rachel feels the eyes of the whole group on her. Her voice starts getting louder. She’s already rounding the back of the cruiser, away from the group.
“We still don’t understand what they are. Maybe we never will. I don’t know. But we know what they’re doing. We can see what their target was all along. And it wasn’t us at all. They don’t care about us. What they really care about is—is crazy! It doesn’t make sense. They never counted on us surviving. They’re basically cowards. They’re desperate, but they’re not fighters. They …need something. Something that doesn’t make sense.”
She’s babbling now, stumbling over her words as she backs into the middle of Mulberry, her rear bumping the fender of an abandoned Toyota.
“I just want to go home.”
“You’d be safer to stay with us,” Joel says calmly. “I think I speak for the rest of us when I say that we’re stronger with you here.”
“I feel like I’ve been stumbling the whole way. Making decisions that have been wrong, and seeing people die along the way. I don’t want anyone else to die. I don’t want to cause anymore death.”
Bonnie shakes her head. “You haven’t—”
“It doesn’t matter. Just let me go, okay?”
“Oh, Rachel.”
“No, I don’t want that.” Rachel looks straight at Bonnie. “I love you, but I have to go.”
Blood Red Page 25
