After The Virus (Book 1): After The Virus

by Archer, Simon

  “So we actually have a chance to hunt together,” Jackie said as we hurried along. Neither of us felt good about spending much time in the open, and there was a fair bit of open ground here.

  “Yep,” I said. “Not necessarily the quarry I would have chosen for our first time out, though.”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I’m not happy about this, but I think I’m good for it.”

  “If we can take the guy alive,” I said. “I’d prefer that, but I don’t know that he’ll let us.”

  “He’s already tried to kill you,” she asserted. “You’re probably well within your rights to kill him first, right?”

  “I guess,” I scoffed and shook my head. “It’s just that with so few people, I kind of feel like we should save everyone we can.”

  “I understand,” she said after a moment. We were about halfway to the trees at this point, double-timing through the field.

  “Do you think he’s still here?” she asked, shifting her grip on the rifle.

  “No idea.” I shrugged and gave her a sidelong look. “So, who’s the character on your rifle?”

  “Oh,” she blushed a little. “It’s Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Why does he have grenades for hands?”

  “They’re more like bracers,” she replied. “They help him focus his power, which is making explosions with the sweat from his hands.”

  “Neat,” I commented. “Maybe we can find the DVDs and watch it when all this is done.”

  “Really?” she asked incredulously. “You want to watch anime with me?”

  “Sure,” I said with a grin. “Might be fun.”

  “I think I’d love that,” she said, smiling.

  “Cool,” I looked away and scanned the nearby woods. There was mostly just a screen of pines between the field and the back of the welcome center. “Time to be quiet now.”

  Jackie nodded, brought her rifle around to a ready position as I did the same, and we moved silently in and among the trees.

  34

  No one took any potshots at us as we crept up on the trucker side of the welcome center. There had been a couple of trucks parked back here, but they were broken into, vandalized, and the caps were off their fuel tanks. The storage barn at the edge of the property was broken open, and the tools and other items had been dragged out and left scattered.

  As for the welcome center itself, well, what little we could see didn’t look good. Whoever had done this was extremely destructive. Shards of tempered glass glittered in the sunlight on the sidewalks.

  “Damn,” Jackie whispered sadly. “This place was always so nice to stop at, even with the old bathrooms. The last time I was through, one of the older ladies at the desk told me they were going to rebuild it, but they planned to put all the stuff from inside in storage.”

  “I never really stopped here,” I said. “No reason to.”

  “They had a stuffed fox in a plexiglass case that had crossed eyes and was investigating a little beetle right in front of its nose,” she told me. “I liked to stop and visit him.”

  That was an adorable story. I found a tree with a good view of the back of the building and crouched down. Jackie settled behind another tree a few yards away, and we both raised our rifles to study the place through our scopes.

  Everything looked quiet. Somehow we’d managed to beat Bruce and Angie here, too. I swept my field of view further and saw nothing until the battered rear end of Dodge showed up right where I left it. The rest of it was out of sight behind trees, but my heart sped up just a little. If I could recover my tools and stuff from the boxes, I’d be happy. Maybe I’d go into Auburn to one of the bigger dealerships and pick out the nicest truck I could find.

  And a Hummer. I always wanted to drive a luxury version of the humvees we rode around the desert in. Bruce would probably mock me extensively, though, but I didn’t care.

  Much.

  Maybe I’d get both.

  “Psst.”

  I looked curiously over at Jackie. Her Winchester was aimed off in the direction I’d gazed, distracted by the sight of my truck.

  “Something’s weird in the woods,” she whispered.

  That prompted me to take another, deeper look. Between the trees, tucked deep in the shadows, was something that didn’t quite look right. It was hard to make out the outline of it, but maybe, just maybe, it was a blind.

  “We need to check that out,” I whispered back. “But I need to warn Bruce.”

  Jackie nodded, and we both faded back into the woods. Once we were out of sight of the suspicious item, I pulled out the walkie-talkie and turned it on. The thing only had five or six miles worth of range, but the survivalist and Angie couldn’t be that far away.

  “Hunter to Driver,” I said into the microphone, holding down the send button. “Are you there? Over.”

  “This is the Big Green Truck,” Angie replied almost immediately. “Driver’s busy, but we copy.”

  “Possible hostile sighted,” I continued. “Looks like a blind or something. Recommend keeping your distance, over.”

  “Copy that, Hunter,” she replied. “One moment.”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes at Jackie. She stifled a giggle. I had my back to a pine, and she crouched a short distance away, keeping watch. A minute passed, then the radio crackled again.

  “We’re going to slow down a bit and give you fifteen minutes to get a better vantage, then roll in as a distraction,” Angie said. “Have you checked inside the center? Over.”

  “We have not,” I replied. “Saw the anomaly and paused to give you a heads-up. Over.”

  “Copy that, Hunter,” she said. “We’ll keep some distance. Over and out.”

  I clicked the radio off and hooked it back on my belt.

  “You heard that, I’m sure,” I said to Jackie.

  “Yep. We’d better get moving.”

  Putting all of our training and experience in woodcraft and hunting to the test, the two of us slipped along parallel to the interstate, making for where we thought we’d seen the blind or whatever it was.

  I was in the lead, and we were moving slowly. Hopefully, Bruce would take the maximum amount of time that he’d given us. It was going to be close. Something caught my eye, down around shin height, and I raised a hand for Jackie to stop. To her credit, she did and held her position to keep watch while I knelt down and checked for what I thought I’d seen.

  Tripwire.

  That implied we were close to something that someone didn’t want us to get close to. I pointed it out silently to the young woman, and her eyes widened. We couldn’t rush this, and I suspected we were too close to call Bruce. Hopefully, the pair in the deuce-and-a-half could deal with whatever our enemy threw at them. I followed the tripwire and found not one, but two actual freaking claymores.

  Where the hell had this son of a bitch gotten those? Maybe he’d actually been active duty or National Guard when everything went down, and taken his section eight self to the armory, loaded up, and gone hunting for people. Something was not right in this guy’s head, and whether it was delusional levels of PTSD or some other psychosis, he was dangerous.

  I picked up a couple of small twigs and carefully hung them on the wire. There was no time to try to disarm the thing without wire cutters, and Bruce was getting closer. I stood and stepped carefully over the wire, then watched Jackie follow. She was graceful and sure-footed, that was certain.

  At least landmines were hard to come by, but there were other kinds of traps that you could set, given time and inclination. Apparently, our quarry had the time and inclination, too. We found game traps, another tripwire connected to a single claymore this time, and managed to notice and avoid the scanning area of a battery-powered motion sensor.

  Finally, we were within view of the odd structure that Jackie noticed. It was, indeed, a blind, with the hard edges broken up by netting and woodland-colored strips of cloth. Clever as hell, I thought.

&n
bsp; The blind was a full-sized little shed-like structure, with a door on our side, and probably windows or window-slits watching the road and the rest area. Flanking the door was not just one, but a pair of motion sensors. If our guy was in there, he’d come out shooting once those were triggered. We could start shooting into the thing, and our rifle rounds would likely punch clean through it unless he’d done something like line the inside with kevlar.

  At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past him.

  A faint diesel rumble reached my ears. There came Bruce, right on time. The old man pulled into the welcome center and rolled to a stop at the top of the entrance driveway, and I could imagine him scanning the space ahead for anything suspicious.

  Jackie reached over and touched my arm. She’d been watching the blind while I watched Bruce’s approach. I snapped my gaze back to the target as it shook just a little. Someone was definitely inside.

  It was time to take a risk.

  “We know you’re in there,” I bellowed, switching to my .45 as I slung the rifle and pressed back against a pine. “Come out with your hands up!”

  Jackie gave me a moment’s unbelieving look and put her back to a tree, just like I had. Hopefully, this would distract the bastard.

  It certainly did something. Immediately after I spoke, the three cars sitting in the parking lot of the welcome center exploded. Bruce’s truck rocked, and, miracle of miracles, the windows held. The center wasn’t so lucky. All the glass on the front blew inward, the door to the blind flew open, and the big man in the black BDU’s burst out, a folding stock shotgun in his hands. His face was covered, and he was decked out in body armor.

  The shotgun spoke. Buckshot struck bark from the trees Jackie and I hid behind. That almost did it for her. She flinched and huddled, finally freezing up. I didn’t blame her one bit and was proud as hell of her for making it this far.

  I had the training and the experience not to freeze up the instant I was under fire. This guy looked to have heavy armor, a lot like what Bruce had distributed to us, only in black instead of woodland camo. I hoped I still had my competitive range skills, leaned around my cover, and fired.

  First shot, by pure instinct, hit the man in the center of mass, and the .45 hollow point round just flattened on his body armor. Still, the force of the impact rattled him enough that I dropped my aim and fired a second shot. This one hit him in the left leg and knocked it out from under him. He went down heavily on his side but recovered a lot faster than I expected, and a shotgun blast almost clipped me as I went back under cover.

  Hopefully, Bruce and Angie were alright. I really hadn’t expected them to pay the price for my attempt to get the man out of his blind.

  That exchange had served to break Jackie out of her shock. She drew her Glock and popped off a few rounds, unfortunately into the center of mass. The big guy struggled to his knees, firing off rounds from his shotgun that did a number to the bark on that side of our cover. Thankfully, he didn’t have much of anything with real penetration.

  Instead of drawing either of the pistols he wore, though, he kept an armored arm protecting his face, and squirmed around to the stairs of the blind before reaching in and pulling out-

  “Grenade!” I shouted and dove, tackling Jackie out of the way as the target tossed the small, olive-green orb, yelling, “Look to the light, ye faithless, and be healed!”

  I curled around her as best I could, praying this armor was as good as Bruce implied. There was a moment of silence, then a giant suddenly struck me in the back with his club, and the two of us were thrown aside, ass over teakettle. All the world went silent, spun, and then was dark for a moment. Instinct and trained reactions got me back on my feet, and I dragged Jackie behind a tree. Adrenaline was what I had going right then, and it was what I needed.

  The man by the blind sat on the stairs, his body shaking as he drew out another grenade. The leg I’d shot bled, crimson liquid pouring out over the wooden steps and the leaf-covered ground.

  By some miracle, I still had my .45. I raised it in slow motion, fired, fired again, and again. The man’s head snapped back at the second shot, and the grenade dropped at his feet.

  We were still too close, but at least there was a tree. I covered Jackie with my body again, felt the deep bass of the shockwave in my chest, and knew it was over.

  The blind was gone, as was about half of the black-clad madman. The armor had done something. It just wasn’t nearly enough for a point-blank grenade. I interposed myself between that sight and Jackie, and just held her tight. She clung to me as well, her body shaking.

  It had been a terribly close call, but she’d done well. I’d have to tell her that when I could hear again, and I knew I would, as a ringing had begun in my ears. In silence, I did a quick check of her ears. There was no blood, thank God. I checked mine next, and my fingers came back clean.

  She reached up and cupped my face in her hands, her wide eyes locked with mine, and she kissed me. We’d not just lived through the fight, we’d won it, despite everything.

  Bruce and Angie didn’t take long to find us, and we were still deaf when they did. I could almost hear myself if I yelled, though. Rather than try to puzzle out what happened, the pair of them just helped us get back to the truck, gave us something to drink, and wrapped us in those silly aluminum foil shock blankets.

  Estelle was really going to be pissed. The thought made me start laughing, even though I could barely hear myself. Angie looked at me like I was crazy while Bruce just shook his head. Jackie caught the fever and started to shake, too, her face contorted with hysterical mirth as tears ran down her face.

  Bruce said something to Angie, then took the AR-15 and left us with her in the back of his truck. I took a moment to look around while I recovered from the breathlessness the laughing fit had left me with.

  I’ll be damned. The girls hadn’t exaggerated. There really was an old Gatling gun back here.

  35

  Jackie insisted, despite being mostly deaf and partly in shock, in making her way to the broken glass doors of the welcome center to check and see if the fox was there. She was elated when it was, and despite the general vandalism to the racks of brochures and the front desk, pretty much unharmed. It had been dragged out from its former position, though, and formed a centerpiece for a rather terrifying sight.

  The man had loaded up the room with gasoline and pipe bombs, all wired to an electronic detonator. That led to a frantic search by Bruce and Angie while I kept Jackie calm, despite her insistence on rescuing the fox.

  It took them a while, but the two came walking back from their quest sporting relieved looks. My hearing had recovered, at this point, to where I could hear if I listened hard, and they shouted.

  Bruce held up a box with a broken antenna and a series of three switches and three buttons. Two of the switches had been thrown, but not the third.

  “Radio detonator,” he yelled. “Set for three things, two of them used.”

  “I’d guess the cars and the semi,” Angie filled in.

  “That’s what I said,” Bruce protested. “The last one is probably for that.” He waved a hand off in the direction of the welcome center.

  “I need to rescue the fox,” Jackie said insistently.

  I heaved a sigh and looked between the two of them. “Would one of you help her get the fox while the other goes with me to get my tools?”

  “I’ll go with you,” Angie volunteered.

  Bruce sighed and looked at Jackie, then motioned in the direction of the building. She smiled and took his arm, half-dragging the old survivalist towards the welcome center. I chuckled and winced a little. Even with the armor, the grenade going off hadn’t done me any favors. At least it had been a non-fragmenting kind, or Jackie and I might not have been listening to muffled voices and a ringing in our ears.

  The walk up to the truck, even with Angela’s quiet company, seemed to take forever. Maybe Estelle’s treatments were already wearing off, or I was more inju
red than I realized.

  No. That wasn’t it. I suddenly realized what was wrong with me. The excitement was over, and I was coming down off a major adrenaline rush. Just to check, I raised my right hand and looked at it. There was a noticeable tremor, and my arm felt like lead when I lifted it.

  Silently, Angie just took my hand and smiled at me. “You’ll be okay,” she mouthed.

  I nodded. She was right, although it might be awhile before my hearing fully recovered. There wasn’t a lot to be done about that.

  We reached the battered Dodge, and I paused to gaze sadly at it, then turned my gaze to the burnt-out husk of what was once a very nice Kenmore. Why had this guy been so intent on destroying things? He had very deliberately set a trap on the westbound lanes of I-85 and waited for survivors to cruise by. Either they would stop at the welcome center, or they’d drive by. Either way, he’d attack.

  Angie tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a curiously cute head-tilt as if to say, “Can we get your stuff and get out of here?”

  I nodded and tore my eyes away from the truck, focused, and climbed up into the bed of my truck to check the boxes. Even after I unlocked them, we had to open them up with a pry bar. I really did fear the worst when the first one popped open.

  Lady Luck, though, smiled on me today. Everything was there, and though muddled, none of my tools were damaged more than cosmetically. I pulled them out with Angie’s help and sorted everything. We were maybe halfway done when Bruce and Jackie pulled up in the deuce-and-a-half.

  The old survivalist pulled out some empty canvas duffle bags for us to load the tools and anything else we could salvage from my Dodge into. Once we were done, we all piled into the big truck, only this time, Jackie and I were in the back. There, out of sight of the other two, and able to claim deafness, later, we had a very pleasant make-out session that only broke up when we felt the truck slow and turn onto the bumpy driveway to the farm.

  Estelle met us, and I didn’t catch much of the exchange between Bruce, Angie, and the doctor, but she definitely seemed pissed that Jackie and I hadn’t been brought directly back to the farm. We were quickly escorted into the house and to the bedroom where we were thoroughly examined, given some light food and water, and put to bed.